great area - light decline (2024) [Hi-Res]

Coming into the world via Relaxin’ Records—the imprint helmed by the ever elusive Inga Copeland, aka Lolina—great area have a few areas of aesthetic overlap with their label boss. One of those is a love of mystery; it took me a bit of Google digging to learn that great area is the recording alias of UK visual artist Georgie Nettell. The other is a fondness for low lit, moody musical terrain: like Lolina’s brilliant 2014 album Because I’m Worth It, light decline favors deep blues and purples over searing reds and oranges. But that’s where the similarities end; light decline’s ruthlessly minimal songs—bass, keys, vocals, drum machine, that’s it—nod toward the spookier end of UK post-punk (think Faith-era Cure), and its sparse songs house no end of emotional bleakness. On light decline, Nettell isn’t sad or depressed; what she evokes more than anything else is a deliberate emotional blankness—the feeling of someone staring dead-eyed into the middle distance and recounting all of the ways friends and lovers had left them behind. It’s brutally effective—a collection of ghost stories about the scariest spectre of all: the past, and the ways it haunts us all.

Tracklist:
1.01 - great area - light decline (2:43)
1.02 - great area - pest (2:08)
1.03 - great area - hazards (2:09)
1.04 - great area - fun (2:23)
1.05 - great area - the laws of physics (2:16)
1.06 - great area - 100% enthousiastic (1:51)
1.07 - great area - if you stop moving you don't exist, if you fall behind you're dead (2:39)