Hallock Hill - Kosloff Mansion

  by Fiona Hutchings

published: 13 / 6 / 2014

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I'd never heard of Hallock Hill and had no idea what to expect when his latest album 'Kosloff Mansion' dropped through my door. I have many a way for selecting music to review. Alongside the usual like the band/like their influences/ like their name I also gravitate towards things that say 'limited' and 'vinyl'. There are 200 copies of this album pressed on vinyl and it also available on CD and MP3. It wasn't just my inner music nerd that appealed though. This album is Tom Lecky's fourth Hallock Hill album and is marked as his first collaboration. The Lowland Hundred's Tim Noble's work on this album caught my attention too. Lecky composed the music over a few weeks, and when Noble was approached to comment on the work he asked if he could work his opinions into the piece. The very satisfying album turned up with no press release, and, as I dropped the needle to the record, I enjoyed those few seconds of static sound with no idea what would come next. I realised I was bracing myself a little for something loud and aggressive when the sound of tinkling raindrops began. There are track names but mostly they seem to smoothly flow into each other. It is the very definition on ambient music, placing the emphasis on tone and atmosphere over more traditional uses of structure and rhythm. Here and there I do get the sense of a conversation taking place, but there is only the occasional jarring sound, like Lecky and Noble are disagreeing. In parts it puts me in mind of Eno's 'Music For Airports'. Overall it is something very different. Never in any danger of becoming back ground noise, it is both engaging and soothing and a record worth playing as well as owning.

Track Listing:-

1 I Light the Lamp and Sit Down
2 The Good Dead
3 The People Without Tears
4 Death Was a Bird
5 Villages of the Black Earth
6 A Secret It Remains
7 Another Light
8 Workbench Atheist
9 Demons In the Birchwoods
10 Farewell, Pale Corpse of Many Sins
11 The Immortalisation Commission
12 We Looked for You for 52 Years
13 Massed Bands and Megaphones

Band Links:-

https://twitter.com/hallockhill
http://hallockhill.com/
https://hallockhill.bandcamp.com/

Label Links:-

https://twitter.com/ha_recs
http://hundredacrerecordings.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hundredacrerecordings

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