London’s SWIMS - the label behind a vinyl edition of Roméo Poirier’s contemporary classic ‘Plage Arrière’ - sift an enigmatic fantasy soundtrack oddity from the aether, which they rightly compare with “everything from Michael Nyman to Demdike Stare, Ghostbox to Angelo Badalamenti… perhaps even Broadcast on a particularly awkward day (RIP)”.
Originally issued by cult label Dramatic Records in 2016, and here reworked and reimagined by SWIMs, ‘Devotional Music for Invisible Cities’ is the result of a group of anonymous artists briefed to the following score cues: “"Their City Tessellates Infinitely”; “Their God Is Ugly”; “No Two Chants Can Repeat" (repeat until unimaginably portentous…)”. All very mysterious, the music follows to 13 “songs” that play out like a delirious ethnography or vaporous psychogeography of a collective ambient flâneur mind. In that context, they project a shared dream of succinct, illusive fragments that tile up to something broader, yet still eluding a complete view of their subject.
In its transition from a warbling autotune paean shivered with far eastern string tunings, and passing out into noise on ‘Abstract Devotions Earn Most Love’, and thru the Nyman-esque neo-classical waltz of ‘Their Devotion is Choreographed Across the Lands’, they play a very canny game of hide and seek in the invisible city of the title. Cultural signposts are warped and hazily half-heard in the mists of their music, with poetic track titles suggesting as much as the sounds as they strafe from Michael Mann-esque noirish scaping in ‘The Devoted Destroy All Machinery’ thru the bleak post-industrial zones of ‘Immobile, They Fantasises Endlessly’ recalling Demdike ate their loosest, evocative.
Grander choral arrangements in ‘The Devout Vary Their Chants’, contrast a more harrowed, keening choir in ‘Their God Is Ugly’, and a Richard Young-like lament ‘These People Are Exhausted’, pushing outward and upward into neon ambient-flecked aerial suspense with ‘They Celebrate Imaginary Victories’ and something like a Matt Johnson instrumental for Ghost Box with the woozily processed voice on ‘Love of Pleasure is All.’ All ideal for letting the imagination run free thru headphone drifts across the city or in quiet mode at home.
Review by Boomkat.