Lines Of Silence - The Long Way Home (2024)

The Long Way Home may be the third album by Lines of Silence but it is also their first since the band’s line up expanded to include Manchester’s electronics wizard Dave Clarkson alongside founding member David Little.

Lines of Silence are a kosmische and krautrock referencing band hailing from Todmorden, West Yorkshire by way of South East London and Manchester. David formed Lines of Silence as a solo project, one that subsequently incorporated a loose collective of like-minded musicians, often playing improvised live sets with an ever-shifting line-up.

David invited Dave Clarkson - who he knew from his time on London’s Linear Obsessional label - to play a gig in 2023. They both enjoyed the experience so much they decided to carry on working together. Dave is a veteran of the Manchester electronics scene and has released his well-received Pocket Guides series of field recordings-based compositions, as well as being one half of Scissorgun with Factory Records Alumnus Alan Hempsall.

A change in gear from the long-form soundscapes of previous release Stations of the Sun (Dimple Discs, 2022), The Long Way Home sees the band setting the controls for more varied destinations with a mix of shorter and punchier tracks alongside expansive ambient experimentation.

The title track of the album was remixed by FaUSt and Ulan Bator’s Amaury Cambuzat who David met on an experimental music retreat in the Pyrenees in May 2023. David and Dave loved Amaury’s version so much they released it in an edited format as the album’s lead single. The piece also features on the album in its full, unedited form.

The classic kosmische and krautrock influences that underpin Lines of Silence’s work are apparent throughout the album - from the motorik beats on the opener, thumping Faust-style drums, Cluster, Kraftwerk and Harmonia’s electronica to the embracing of Can-like grooves, However, Lines of Silence is not a band to be confined by genre. The Long Way Home also incorporates elements of exotica and even hints of Miles Davis’ Get Up With It electronic era.

David and Dave approached the writing of the album through improvisation, the sharing of ideas electronically and the mixing of different production processes and styles. Pieces that started with a specific feel often became something else entirely as the duo swapped ideas, influences, and experiences.

For example, Tzip Tzap! - the second single from the album - started life as an abstract noise piece but evolved into a kosmische surf rock track with Dave’s psychedelic electronic processing sending it further into outer space in terms of mood and sound. In its early form, Phantom Galaxy was based around a Jaki Liebezeit, almost Madchester-style groove before transforming into a lower key combination of exotica and post-rock exploration.

The long form sonic, and at times experimental, excursions that characterised earlier works by Lines of Silence still have a presence of the album, however. Penultimate track, Withens Clough is an expansive dark ambient piece reminiscent of the feel of Miles Davis’ He Loved Him Madly and Eberhard Schoener’s Meditations.

Combining synth drones, spaced-out, almost western guitar, electric pianos fed through wah pedals and mellotron, Withens Clough was influenced by the feelings David encountered when visiting the titular local reservoir set into the moorlands of Calderdale - a site both beautiful and foreboding, depending on the ever-changing weather patterns of the Upper Calder Valley region of the UK that David calls home.

Summing up the overall theme of the album David says, “The Long Way Home is an exploration of what it means to find ‘home’ or belonging, geographically, socially, musically or personally. Over its seven pieces, it charts that journey through its twists, turns, pit stops and false starts until arriving at the final destination.”