(2022) Ben McElroy - How I Learnt to Disengage from the Pack          


Review:
Ben McElroy first made music as a teenager experimenting with cassette recorders. His adult process may have upgraded to a laptop, but his primary tools remain doggedly lo-fi: accordions in such a state of distress that they fall apart before the end of a song, disintegrating audio equipment, plus well-worn string instruments, whistles and guitars. All often come together to create a shivering seabed of sound: when his barely there vocals appear, as they do on the title track, it evokes a haunting. How I Learnt to Disengage from the Pack recalls the ambient/indie-folk of groups such as Epic45, with technology adding texture – although McElroy’s tunes are often cast in more traditional clothes. ‘Store Away for a Winters Day’ features a fiddle pivoting and swooping over a pretty soft drone, while Hedgehogs begins like a piece of 8-bit rural weirdness (carrying hints of the Ghost Box record label’s output) before blossoming into something straighter, but still playful and free. See More engineers webs of bright guitars before the tune turns into a processed, enveloping shimmer – suggesting a dazzle in communion with the natural world – while Wolves Dance yomps with grit on its boots, leading off from a cello towards whistles that create their twisted Celtic lament, accompanied by scattershot hand drums. Deeper stuff also lurks in its layers. Buried birdsong in From Time to Time casts the bouncy tune after it in a strange sheen, while electronic decay rubs and twitches throughout. A teacher by day, McElroy recorded this album in snatches over five years; finishing it coincided with the end of his relationship, and he wonders whether we can hear that loss in its fissures. If anything, this record is too pretty, and could do with more baring of teeth. Nevertheless, it remains a beautiful early year listen, shining a light in tough times.





Track Listing:
1.Store Away For A Winters Day 03:27
2.How I Learnt to Disengage From The Pack 05:43
3.Hedgehogs 02:03
4.From Time To Time 08:19
5.See More 02:07
6.Bed Down In The Murk 04:52
7.Wolves Dance 06:34
8.Collecting Bone Dust 05:42


Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk, ambient
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits