Wolverhampton electronic musician Stephen Wilkinson delivers his eighth album.
True to its title, Phantom Brickworks is nine extended ambient tracks – audio portals built to access haunted serene settings. The seventeen-minute ‘Phantom Brickworks II’ begins with the ebb and flow of trickling water, building to a minimal mural of thick mist over a park during a wintry sunrise. Samples of heavily echoed pianos and classical strings create a natural air of mystery.
However, as the loops become impossible to tell apart, the atmosphere becomes alien and toxic. Then builds a more disjointed entanglement of percussive jangling, gusts of white noise and Geiger counter-style clicks, pops and squeaks. This unity of nature and unearthliness, means that the samples of a child’s laughter take on gloomier contexts, leading to a fascinatingly haunting record.
4/5
