Review Summary: In the foggy dead of night, amid the city's steel colossi, and alone.
I’ve always found the hazy harshness of cities fascinating. I don’t know why. It just somehow clicks with me. But more than that I am constantly being astonished by those concrete brutalist structures clashing with nature. A titan of human culture standing amid nature’s own minions, be it a building at the edge of a town, surrounded by forest, or a solitary monument amidst nothingness. (Just look up images for “Spomenik” and see for yourselves (it really just means ‘memorial’ in Serbian or Croatian, but it grew to be associated with only these structures)). It’s actually magical in a way, all of those now-pointless blocks standing there from a bygone era, commemorating a myriad of different uprisings and massacres, now being utilised by nature.
I don’t know what it is about
Miles to Midnight that reminds me of those things. It is quite possible that had the cover art been anything but a lone man in front of a lone building in a fog, I’d have a completely different association. But now the image has been planted and I cannot get rid of it.
I set out to seek ambient records I’d like this year, because I never was capable of finding any, but now I feel as though my journey is over with the very first endeavour.
Miles to Midnight engulfed me. I don’t think I am capable of giving each track an individual description, but I can describe the entire experience. That is, of course, if the introductory paragraph wasn’t enough.
It’s walking through an empty lavish hall room of an art deco skyscraper in a custom made suit of dark wool and loneliness. It’s a midnight walk into town, obscured by technologically industrial megalomania. It’s Hugh Ferriss’ phantasmagorical escapades come to life. It’s the Italian futurist movement in its integrated form. It’s that desperation of a working man in a hotel lounge, knowing he will never escape this life. It’s the most haunting image of a metropolis that doesn’t need words to make its point.
