Before We Lie Down in Darknesse (The Inward Circles)

Glass mastered music CD
Download code
6-panel card enclosure
Edition of 200

 

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"Constructed entirely from a dusty six-second fragment of Baroque recorder music, Richard Skelton's first new work as ‘The Inward Circles’ in 6 years is a stunning evocation of environmental collapse."
(Boomkat)

“He conjures up atmospheres that feel as haunted and bereft as they do beautiful – tragically, even at times sinisterly, beautiful.”
(A Closer Listen)

“Skelton spins a simple sonic fragment into an interrogation of decay, deep time, and death. Rolling waves of sound ring out through misty white noise like foghorns, hanging sluggishly then fading, as if they only have the capacity for two or three notes before collapsing under the strain.”
(The Quietus)

“digs deep and low into the cavernous catacombs of unexplored sonic void”
(Headphone Commute) 

Before We Lie Down in Darknesse is Richard Skelton’s first full-length album as The Inward Circles in six years. It continues his preoccupation with decay and transformation, but whereas previous albums subjected pristine recordings of cellos and violas to various destructive processes, Before We Lie Down in Darknesse begins with a degraded source: a discarded fifty-year-old vinyl recording of Baroque recorder music that Skelton discovered in the Scottish Borders.

The entire album is composed from a single six-second fragment: a solitary wavering recorder note ringing out into the silence of the record’s runout groove. In the wake of impending global environmental collapse and widespread species extinction, it is not difficult to perceive the broader resonances of this act of auditory salvage. The music of Before We Lie Down in Darknesse glimmers all the more brightly because it is recuperated from a source that is on the point of disappearing. Even as Skelton acknowledges—via the words of Thomas Browne—our seemingly inevitable descent into impending darkness, he cannot help but offer a small gesture of hope; a belief in the possibility of change and renewal.