On Dark Globe’s new EP, Hollow Ponds
And so the song lake extends beyond the ponds of the title,
The hollowness yielding substance through Steve Norris’ ambience on Guitar,
Sounds that breach Bill ‘Nelsonics,’ Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Robin Guthrie,
Casting precious spells upon surface, with the actual music as water
And cosmos too, graced by stars. Having worked with Roger Eno and Youth,
Alex Patterson, Gaudi, Norris’ sound exhalations reverberate with a beauty
That twists the air itself into music, tasting through taint and tincture
Of something returning now from the past. Waves of glorious sound
Stir souled rain, as if sensing something else deep within us,
Which is washing us clean and restoring the ascent of the heart
On love’s chart. Gentle lines undulate. Collaborator Longshore Drift’s synths
Capture motion, as if this report from a landscape bore a journalist’s
Nom de plume. As the two musicians swim through, they orchestra up
A full ocean. The sounds that crest soon enthrals us, and this reportage
From the water between men and machine mirrors tune.
The music is a symbiosis in sound through which Dark Globe glisten;
As with Gavin Bryars double bass runs in ‘Sinking of the Titanic’
Something bright and clear is subsumed. Chiefly, the atmosphere
Of intent that summons every form of magic in water,
From Tintagel Lake, up to Loch Ness that is heard to ride within
Every note.
Hollow Ponds sets the scene, but this hollowness
Is not empty; It is a musical report on dimensions,
Particular frequencies, Place invoked.
A kind of distress signal soon forms,
Gaining both ground and focus, representing a presence
That may or may not be in control. As the pattern almost parodies tune,
The swathes of Steve’s guitar maintains movement,
On which this expression redefines water’s hold.
An electronica crescendo arrives like a startling bite to the senses;
A conglomeration of music, detailing imagination’s force on the mind.
Before a synth line becomes birds, or the gleam of a fish’s
Glaring eye in the darkness, beseeching sound despite silence
On both this listening day and all time.
Dark Globe’s new EP, Hollow Ponds is music for the mind and soul
Jointly. It stirs the ripples of being across the face of lake, stream
And sea. It is music as air and the movement of thought in air.
It’s direction: a unique drift that teaches you and every buried
Sense how to be.
In Part 2, The Flats,
There is a skitter of synths like ice dancing,
As an arctic wind and slow fire rise from the (pseudonym submerged)
John Horsley’s keyboards and Steve Norris’ strings.
Notes are painted like cloud, or shards of moon across landscape,
Depicting a location in sound, or, perhaps sound creature stirring,
As here through shadow, and in shadow alone, presence sings.
This is drift as dub. Or drift as trance. Drift as rhythm.
Ambience chasing that seeks to retrieve music’s heart.
With the kind of yearning unheard in even classical playing,
These escalations and these deft retreats make song art.
Hollow Ponds can’t run dry. Hollow Ponds lead us further,
Down beneath surface into the alien dark of the earth,
Where what that earth weeps is tethered now by this music
That seeks then soothes all disturbance and aims to repair
Panic’s hurt. The flats instead now reveal a quite different angle,
As here, two song angels revivify water’s mark.
So, stand by these banks. Lower yourself to this water.
As it covers it saves you. You will breathe a new life.
You’ll hear stars.
David Erdos 20th February 2020
https://dark-globe.bandcamp.com/album/hollow-ponds
