Pneumatic Tubes - A Letter from TreeTops (Ghost Box)

An album with its own secret geography, A Letter from TreeTops finds Woodstock-born Jesse Chandler perfectly at home on Ghost Box Records

In the last years of his life, Dave Chandler worked up the courage to introduce himself to Michael Lang, the Woodstock festival organiser, in a coffee shop. Chandler shook Lang’s hand and thanked him for such a seminal experience in his young adulthood. Another formative event in Chandler’s early life was attending the Treetops summer camp in New York State. After the death of Dave Chandler in 2018, his son Jesse began writing music inspired by his father’s youthful escapades among the cascades and mountains.

Ghost Box Records, with its yen for narratives linked by mystery and loss, is a perfect fit for Chandler, who records under the name Pneumatic Tubes. (He also plays keys and flutes for Midlake and Mercury Rev). A Letter from TreeTops feels less about romantic or falsified assumptions of the past, and more about memory as a sensory store. To achieve this, Chandler has used the soulful glow of vintage keyboards and mixed in the mythic resonance of woodwind. His melodies rise like incense through fresh mountain air, or float contentedly upstream. Sorrow and euphoria fill the verdant dreams of each passing scene. Beyond the obvious Ghost Box labelmate comparisons, we listeners might factor in the likes of Szun Waves, Laurence Pike, Sharron Kraus and Hannah Peel.

Opening track “Summer’s Children” has the breezy innocence of a Virginia Astley piece in its enchanted sweet melody. “Joyous Lake” adds gently profound beats to some wistful and peaceful electronica, while the raga swirls and giddy piano on “TreeTops” evoke childhood hangouts as more like shrines than dens. Already this could be the soundtrack for a manga folktale, or equally some rugged soul-quest.

“The Big Deep” enters a cerebral keyboard haze with a disturbing sense of loneliness and a touch of dreampunk. Next up, “Mumbly-Peg” takes its name from an old outdoor game played using pocketknives, which might not pass health and safety laws today. Musically it’s a glowing forest coloured by clarinet, subtle oscillations, woodland percussion and trance rapture. Avant-jazz waves on “Camp Sunfrost” conjure the perfumes of morning, huddled by a makeshift fire. Then there’s playful squidgy synths on “Saw Teeth” and the shadowy waltz of “Witch Water”. The chiming “Slow Fawns” has a weightless drift, whilst on “Magic Meadow” guitars echo and rustle in slow flashback over sacred Mellotron chords. And finally, “Summer’s End” is a lush closing reverie to Chandler’s search for magic mementos in a cynical world.

TreeTops imparts a relaxed state of childlike wonder, from an informed adult on a journey through time. Marking the capricious flow of life itself, Chandler’s music offers the final realisation that everything is fixed by destiny.