Monolith Cocktail Blog

Review
Words: Dominic Valvona

Rupert Lally ‘Marine Life’
(Glass Reservoir) Album/21^st September 2020

From an experimental gently challenging label that has only just resurfaced after a long hiatus – following the release of Darren Hayman’s out-of-the-box exploration, Wembley Eiffel Tower -, Glass Reservoir is thankfully back with a roster of new releases in 2020. They’ve picked a right old apocalyptic time to make that return mind, but they have and I for one am happy with that.

GR is an imprint with a remit. That is, to explore the boundaries between the electronic and acoustic. Each release is an invitation to the artist; each release confined to digital download and a limited copy run of hand printed CDs.

The first of a trio of announced releases, Rupert Lally adds to his previous recent subtle Strange Systems and Lost To The Past suites with another evocative ambient soundtrack, Marine Life. An ocean purview, Lally’s aquatic delving compositions provide an out-of-body (of water) experience both beneath and above an unspecified, amorphous sea.

Less Jacques Cousteau and more a blend of Kosmische glide, Vangelis and Arthur C. Clarke’s Cradle, the marine life in this case is mysteriously majestic, supernatural and even alien. The album’s most surprising departure from the signature shimmery efflux, radiant and floating serenity is the almost dreamy, hallucinogenic ‘The Diving Bell’. Frazzled, fizzing splashes cast that bell into the depths of Atlantis on a submerged Bladerunner-esque, ghostly windswept score.

Tranquility beckons though on the album’s opening diaphanous becalmed tide stunner ‘Deceptively Calm’. Lally sends the listener sailing across topographic oceans, or diving into the enormity of nature across squarewaves, subtle melodious synth wanes, vapours and rotor-like undulations. It’s an album of synthesized nature, of refracted light play and the aural senses. Lally creates a great scenic soundtrack to re-launch a quality, unassuming, label.






Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.