Richard Skelton

Landings (Type)

By Erin Wolf
Published: February 9th, 2010 | 7:00am

England’s Richard Skelton beautifully and capably translates his grief into the language of nature and its echoing instrumental counterparts as he takes neo-classical to its most intimate level. On Landings, Skelton’s second release on Type Records, musical composition bleeds into an earthy backdrop with slow-burning melodies wrought by trembling strings, sighing concertinas, and starkly deep pianos that echo the sweep and murmur of the English woods and moors.

Landings is another visit into the avant classical musician’s grief following the death of his wife Louise in 2004. On Skelton’s first release, Marking Time, and his other various projects (A Broken Consort, Riftmusic, etc.), the composer is all weight and gravity in his translation. Although Landings’ working level of sadness brings hints and glimmers of possibility and leads the way to Skelton’s ascent to the surface with moments of audio light interspersing the work’s seventy-minute chained compositions.

Composed and recorded in Anglezarke, the westerly edge of Lancashire’s West Pennine Moors, Skelton utilized scant studio overdubs to complete an opus that is mesmerizingly still, yet alive in every resonance and nuance that being surrounded by natural beauty can invoke. The quivering “Noon Hill Wood” leads and bows against strings, tremulously diving in between the sound and image of trees. Leaves, branches, and bark encircle the anticipatory sound and guide both music and musician to a pensive yet healing dénouement.

Richard Skelton MySpace

Type