The debut album from London-based solo musician Petrels is described by Tartaruga records as ‘a swirling cataract of a record, a deluge of beautiful noise and crushing melody’, and it’s a fitting description for an album that is a unique and mesmerizing ride.
‘Haeligewielle’ is a mostly instrumental record, combining multiple layers of wailing strings, warped electronic noises, occasional haunting vocals and jaunting percussion. At over fifty minutes in length, the album is a mammoth trip of musical intoxication and feels like the kind of listening experience that will have a profound effect how you look at the core of all music, which is a fantastic accomplishment for any artist.
The album starts with a distant hum at the beginning of ‘After Francis Danby’, a track that sounds initially like whale song, hidden beneath layers of whistling wind. This droning is atmospheric in a way that is both enchanting and strange, sometimes drifting into the soundtrack of a morbid sequence in a horror movie, but pulling you out before you get the chance to feel the chill up your spine. The second track, ‘Silt’, continues the tension and is a disjointed instrumental with a macabre twist. An uplifting feel begins to coast through about halfway through the song with a looped sample spinning beneath the strings.
The tracks coast along almost seamlessly, allowing the dreamy ‘Canute’ to shimmer like gold dust upon a canvas of static feedback, samples from a new-age orchestra and a pulsing undercurrent of noise. The experimental essences continue to shine on ‘The Statue Is Unveiled With The Face Of Another’ with numerous influences from the music of world cultures evident. ‘Concrete’ includes the first clear use of vocals, with a low choir adding to the ambience, conjuring images of colour.
‘Winchester Croydon Winchester’ chimes in and feels like a track with a different purpose. The keys and possible woodwind have starker melodies and the track takes the shape of a song better than anything on the album so far. The final track, ‘William Walker Strengthens The Foundations’ is a fifteen minute monster with a low underwater rumbling and electronic hums and whirrs, blocks of sound trying to drown out the various sound effects that struggle to pull to the surface. The odd mix of vocals and distant percussion brings the whole thing to a close, possibly leaving you feeling like you’ve just returned from another planet with information on a distant race of alien beings. Well, maybe not like that, but you’ll certainly feel mysteriously different.
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