The Inward Circles - And Right Lines Limit and Close All Bodies (2017)

And Right Lines Limit and Close All Bodies is Richard Skelton's third full album as The Inward Circles, following 2015's Belated Movements and 2013's Nimrod. And Right Lines continues his exploration of the materiality of sound and the natural processes of weathering, attrition and decay. The source material for these recordings remains largely the same as his Sustain-Release albums of a decade ago - small stringed instruments, found objects, field recordings - but the compositional process itself couldn't be more different. Whereas the recordings under his own name, or as A Broken Consort, were largely concerned with preserving the clarity of acoustic sound, his work as The Inward Circles is devoted to burial, obfuscation and mythologisation. There is a desire to obliterate, to destroy, and to discover anew. Each sonic artefact is subject to repeated distortions of pitch and timbre, and, as a result, is transformed beyond recognition. Any traces of acoustic sound that remain are little more than ghosts, as the whole recording is suffused with electricity, a kind of telluric current, an overwhelming chthonic energy.