Adrian Lane :: Their Ghosts and Ours (Audiobulb)

Their Ghosts and Ours unfolds like a sonic séance, weaving field recordings of abandoned spaces with fractured noise, piano, strings, woodwinds, and electronics to summon deeply personal ghosts—memories that linger, haunt, and quietly reach back through time.

Haunted rooms, living sounds

 

Ghosts are often depicted as translucent, ethereal, or shadowy figures, sometimes dressed in the attire of the era in which they lived. Such are these field-recordings of the sounds of empty buildings commingled with fragments of noise which evoke a nostalgic mood, and are then combined with the sounds of piano, strings, clarinet and synthesizers. I am lost in a perfect seance trance, Their Ghosts and Ours delivers mysterious events that come from our own personal pasts. That is my ghost, not just any ghost — that one reaches me.

“Each piece has a contrast of melancholic melodies with grittier eroded sounds as if they had been unearthed from the past.”

Ghosts are impressions in space and time, and arise from the dark of course. This musical seance might inspire the sound of the dirge that is coming from the caverns below the cliffs at the end of the wind-blasted moors. This could be music that I have never before heard that sounds old and from a time now passed. A spooky layered presentation on the topic of ghosts, memories from the distant past, with creaks and rattles then silky lost glitchy music from some recovered dusty past, very complex. The most common of all ghosts spotted is usually of someone you know, a family member or perhaps even a historical figure, hidden in clouds of atmosphere. This is proof of your imagination.  When the wind changes these sounds might vanish.

“Ghosts are impressions in space and time, and arise from the dark of course. This musical séance might inspire the sound of the dirge that is coming from the caverns below the cliffs at the end of the wind-blasted moors. This could be music that I have never before heard that sounds old and from a time now passed.” ~Robin B James

Their Ghosts and Ours can be heard coming through veils and long passageways, gliding along, looking up at the ceiling, recalling all that time sadly gone, a haunting melody dances strangely behind the orchestra of odd creaks and metallic groans. Why? “Something Brought Me Back” (3:51), strings and chimes with pianish clanks, echoes, piano flutes, cello spirits, linking, clinking and rattling, bits of metal, the feeling of viewing the past through a dark machine. I am now lifeless watching the living take your things.

The second track, “A Broken Frame” (4:59) is where we are walking, on wet pavement, probably at night. Passing a ringing chandelier in an ancient ballroom, remembering how once it was sharper, there were woodwinds with an extra touch, venturing at a sad moderate pace. I think I hear windy flutes and the oboe’s doom tone, walking on those wet streets, the whistling edge of a long ago orchestra, ending in weeping cello flatlines. Beautiful.

A dark dead spooky old picture, “Stretching Ahead” (3:30), are these choirs calling to me alone? A sad story about an endless road, rising into a new perspective of the world, not just here. The sound of static, white noise, interrupted by a piano, joined by the band of ghosts and strange spirits, in turn joined by strings, through a strange clicky static crackle. Perhaps all is lost on that dark old piano, again everybody dies, sending back signals, a strange clicky echo. I am wandering through what seems to be remaining after endless empty hours in the dark. “Summer’s Suns Had Wearied” (4:04), a lovely dark old mood still echoes somehow, I see voice shadows, along comes the bee choir, they are all humming in  morse code. The sound of water and activity, motion, strings rise in and off we go.

A sonic séance of memory ::

The sound of old round flat records, how the needle and vinyl wind-off clicks after the LP has played. “Their Ghosts and Ours” (4:10), brings whispering murmurs, low voices saying something a long time ago, slow sad woodwinds with other spirits within, some kind of old movie flickering through centuries. I will play this again, they will start telling their lives again, to play one more time again, a strange old black & white movie’s  mood music with a scratchy old ghost that is strangely angry. I am just remembering more of those sad old stories pulled apart by time. “To This Place Awakened” (6:32), entering the crypt to sit for a spell, after crying and feeling lost forever, empty, now just waiting a long time, nothing more. I can hear the creaky old dawn, a stuttering organ, dark and dusty, very dusty, feeling the sharp pins of strings, there is a piano here too, a tea setting, something else is here too, a cloud you can mostly see through. This must be a very odd place, the feeling is dangerously unfamiliar, perhaps a perfect chamber fantasy with strange backwards sounds, sparkling bits flying. Mostly I will remember the clarity of the end, a ghostly heaven with an old sounding residue or static, this always ends in heaven.

 

I think I hear shortwave radio, carrying a man’s voice, talking on the edge of forward and backward. The backwards echoes are the best. “We Carried Our Hope” (4:37) remembering the violin player that night, how the electronic darkness added subtle colors, feeling the electronic tension and those voices, people talking to each other and here we are too. This is where the devil went down the rabbit hole, projecting tall shadows all night long, and there we were, following more radio talk with buzzing saws and crying steel in dusty old settings. Can you feel it? These old memories have a sound they leave behind. “Above My Head the Burning Summer Sky” (5:01) seems like crackling static joined by radio glitches and an old sounding piano, ghosts come to sing in a group from a distance, a calm gathering of some disconnected dead people I do not completely remember, old dusty spirits trying one more time to get through to this side. Water sounds, “After The Deluge” (3:14) before the deluge we knew nothing, now all that is washed away, where are we now? These changes are tearing the fabric that separates the past from the present, the darkness continues and the location is uncertain. A keyboard walking in the water, steady steps, probably ankle deep, the deep water has drained, now there is only thick slick mud to walk through.

Some sad empty dark woodwinds open for the piano, all in our haunted room. The piano then leads the way, some haunting melody, sad, returning from the past. I can hear the parts of the piano moving when the keys are pressed. “Not Rent Asunder” (2:56) offers a new growing classical chamber jazz production, floating smoky dreams, slow sleepy dark night sounds, another piano from another time gets stranger fantastic. The following track, “Another Tempest” (1:41), starts with static, then the old circus box is opened and the kaliope is playing. This instead could really be some kind of old organ struggling through time to reach us, hissing old recordings of glitchy orchestral inventions, crackling static from the past, crackly murmurs and premonitions, something is coming through the music. This one is short and murky, a nice touch.

The final stand. “Even From Afar” (3:29), through the dark mists that separate us from the lost days, sad strange melodies winding about, I think of that old piano where you can hear the parts moving, radio static, tuning in the orchestra sound, finding a simple melody dark and old, a string thing strong and straight curving slightly. I love odd electronic sounds from old radio days, the strings coming through, opening a portal piano and releasing odd ghost electronics, there is no way out. This old piano carries perfectly until it wanders off into the darkness again, a slow old song, the wind and icy distance temperatures.

Adrian Lane is a visual artist and musician from Southend-on-Sea in the UK, releasing music under his own name since 2013. His music has appeared on various labels including Preserved Sound, Oscarson, Hibernate, Chitra, and Whitelabrecs. His music explores sounds largely from acoustic sources, but using the computer as a writing tool, he works much more like an electronic musician, exploring contrasts between the organic and synthetic. In the ever-evolving landscape of ambient and neo-classical music, Adrian Lane stands as a dedicated artist, continuously pushing boundaries and weaving sonic tapestries that captivate listeners with their depth and emotional resonance.

“I had a piece which I was experimenting with that captured that feel and sent it to poet Neil McRobert, to get his thoughts. He wrote back; “when I put the track on, the initial sounds brought an image to mind of someone moving very carefully in an abandoned and crumbling building, perhaps stepping on the broken pieces of an old picture frame. I had the impression that the person had returned to the ruin of somewhere they had lived in the past and as the more melodic elements of the music emerged, with their beautiful melancholic melody, they seemed to embody the memories of the person, looking back with a mixture of sadness and happiness. That set of thoughts made brought to mind some of the abandoned homesteads that are scattered in the rangeland and corners of the valley floor…”

Neil McRobert is a writer, researcher and podcaster, with a specialism in horror and other darkly speculative topics; he is the host and producer of the Talking Scared podcast.

Broken Frame, by the poet Neil McRobert ::

Something brought me back
I couldn’t now – any more than then – say why
I turned the tiles
Of yesterday’s dreams
The return to this place
Awakened.

Underfoot, a broken frame
Fractured glass
The corner of a fading image
The echo of our love and work
Remains.

Remember how we’d call the horses down
From their wanderings in the rangeland hills?
They’d dance across the golden grass
For us. Proud and shy and somehow hopeful
All at once.

Their ghosts and ours can still be heard
In song the wind sings here
Inviting the curtain rags to stir
In their pane-less frames.

Eventually, we carried our hope
To a kinder future when
Summers’ suns had wearied
Us with gratitude enough.

Leaving the eucalyptus their vigil
Over welcome shadows
And whisper their longing for rain.

Their Ghosts and Ours is available on Audiobulb. [Bandcamp]