Stepping aside from his films and literature led explorations, Rupert Lally looks back into his own childhood with this first appearance on Modern Aviation

The British-born but currently Switzerland-based Rupert Lally has carved out a prolific niche for himself over the last fifteen or so years. Concentrating extensively on his soundtracks-for-books exercises for Bibliotapes and Bandcamp releases, as well as cinematic and psychogeographical ventures, he has given us a catalogue of imagination and intrigue that sits soundly in the hauntological sphere. Now with his first appearance for Bristol’s dependable cassette/download label Modern Aviation, Lally has followed a more autobiographical path.

This isn’t to say that Lost to the Past sees a sudden switch into singer-songwriter mode but it has realigned its creator’s instrumental framings around something far more self-referential. As the scuffed-up childhood picture cover infers and the accompanying track-by-track sleeve notes explain, this immersive suite focuses on foggy as well as vivid recollections from Lally’s early life in Brighton.

Whilst the album still functions without the backstories behind it, as with Jonathan Sharp’s similarly-conceptualised Divided Time LP for Castles in Space from last year, the personalised tone gives Lost to the Past its profound resonance. Hence, the opening “Climbing the Escarpment” acts as Lally’s multi-layered remembrance of an outing with his late-father, through unearthly encircling drones and buzzing disquiet, that sets the scene for this evocative eight-part collection. Thereafter, comes the early-Orb-meets-primordial-Aphex Twin soundscaping of “Too Young for the Club” and “Books from Floor to Ceiling” to transpose reminiscences of youthful musical and bookish fixations that have steered Lally’s artistic career repeatedly.

Further in, the ensuing “Pale Blue Railings” opts for indeterminate twinkling and string sounds to flashback to a risky parent-panicking exploration of an abandoned property; “Beautiful View of the Concrete” drapes ethereal ripples and pattering percussion around plaintive piano lines to memorialise long-since redeveloped parts of esoteric Brighton architecture; the Vangelis-like eeriness of “What We Found in the Woods” paradoxically revisits cub scout good deeds from an open space mini-adventure; “The Beach Hut” remembers seaside-shed picnics with barely-there hums and whirrs; and “Memories of the Shipwreck” washes coastal field recordings into spectral tiers of synths to decode an early memory of a real beached boat incident.

Although these gathered recordings rarely match the documented narratives in any linear sense, Lost to the Past compellingly conjures the disembodied feelings of recall that go with discovering boxes of old photos, letters and family history miscellanea. Whilst not an easy entry point for latecomers into Rupert Lally’s labyrinthine body of work, this is certainly a thoughtful and rewarding detour for the previously converted.

musiqueparavion.bandcamp.com

Adrian
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