Tape Loop Orchestra - Return to the Light (2018)

Andrew Hargreaves (The Boats, Cotton Goods) channels paranormal music in a hypnotic eulogy to infinity and ephemerality on the Tape Loop Orchestra’s penultimate Instrumental Transcommunications volume, a sublime choral treatment that comes highly recommended if you’re into Ian William Craig, Jóhann Jóhannsson or Max Richter.

Return To The Light’ emulates a cumulative swell of Electronic Voice Pheneomena imaginatively intercepted from the ether and arranged into a hauntingly affective symphonic chorale. Sharing conceptual roots with his peer, Sam A McLoughlin’s ace Tongues of Light project, ‘Channelled Messages at The End of History’, TLO presents himself as a sort of conduit, a spiritual lightening rod or a dark interpreter, who absorbs the messages encoded in the frequencies of ancient light and the electromagnetic spectrum, in order to transduce and limn their meanings to our mortal, temporary vessels.

The results are wonderous, otherworldly, blessed with the aching vulnerability and fragility that many listeners have come to adore in Tape Loop Orchestra’s music.