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Ghost Town Burning

by The Lonely Bell

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  • Ghost Town Burning (Limited edition on grey cassette)
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  • Ghost Town Burning (2nd batch of grey cassettes)
    Cassette + Digital Album

    15 copies available

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about

PRESS

"One of the strongest and most honest albums I’ve listened to, ultimately having a meditative effect on you [...] It’s the sort of sadness that paralyzes your will and poisons your heart with its sonic venom." [...] [T]he moment when you experience a painful plight when your world is broken apart, and if it seems that there is no more hope, “Ghost Town Burning” will comfort you, will be a beacon of light guiding you through your suffering. [...] The world that the first track creates is starkly cold and hollow, feeling entirely desolate. You can almost smell the dry trees and the factory ruins in some abandoned, remote, and snowy place." - Cultartes (ROM)

"A surreal album of wildly deep and subtly nuanced dark ambient music. Lush tones are sustained to oblivion as various colourful additions and sonic anomalies play quietly in the background. An auditory sedative, this music sneaks up on you like an odourless gas, unsuspectingly whacking you into a stupor. [...] Gentle, but not harmless. There's an ominous core to these searching pieces. They mimic heaven and hell with ethereal environments permeated by cloudy darkness."
- No Transmission (IRE)

"A somber and vaguely apocalyptic vision of a dark and desolate world. [...] A beautifully haunting and deeply immersive album from an artist who never disappoints. The music moves like a thick slow-moving fog that gradually envelopes the lost lonely wanderer who finds themself far away in a strange and isolated place. The solemn majesty of these songs penetrate deeply and invoke feelings that often go unchecked, and linger long after the final notes have faded into a misty oblivion... Wave upon wave of ghostly drones and slow rippling ambience gradually builds and sweeps over the land. [...] [T]here's some subtle (and tasteful) female vocal loops buried in the mix, fighting to cut through, which gives the whole thing a strong sense of desperation and yearning." - Fog Songs (UK)

"The Lonely Bell’s ability to make the landscape seem distant or make the listener feel disassociated from it, is impressive and results in a sense of dread that doesn’t permeate enough to become panic, but sits defiantly at the periphery of the experience."
"The Lonely Bell works heartbreak, grief and loneliness into the very air that surrounds the listener. The resultant feeling is one of shock and concern, but not of action or immediate emotion. Instead, the listener is left to explore ruins as gossamer figures and flames seem to fill the heavy air." - Listencorp (UK)

"[F]irst creates presence in order to portray absence, the unease of failed community. Over two, slowly burning twenty-minute pieces, the air remains heavy. However, the subtle rising of a signal on the title track belies the illusion of stasis, while a lone, faraway voice cries out repeatedly within the desolate architecture of “Then the Snow…” Gloomy and austere, Ghost Town Burning can’t help but pull the listener into its sighing void." - Avant Music News (USA)

"Close your eyes here and you find yourself lost in its everything-nothingness. The two twenty-minute halves of this record are quiescent sides of the same coin, spectral and distant drone passages that lay like a haunting fog over anything that could be identifiable. In both cases there’s this constant feeling of remoteness and intangibility, hands feeling their way through the darkness or eyes roaming the twilight for signs of life and home. Though neither feel impenetrable insofar as density is concerned, save for the siren sounds of some distal vocal cries there’s little by way of the familiar. We are alone, suspended in their gaseous emulsions and far out of sight of anything that might give us comfort." - HearFeel (UK)

"The hushed title track is a murkily gigantic and slow-crawling crescendo. [...] an isolated spacecraft traversing through the dark reaches of outermost space, [...] it’s impossible to distinguish whether or not the other sounds are emanating out of or being pulled into this vacuum. [...] ‘Then The Snow…’ quickly accumulates a thick texture from which the subtlest, to the point of indiscernible, droning melodies may be heard as layers upon layers gently wend their perfectly balanced and blended way over and above and through and in-between one another [...] nearer the end, as in the title track, there is what sounds like the voice of someone lost in a landscape of staggering grandeur; a voice calling out above the densely woven, smoothly elongated, and softly rolling textures." - Heresiarch Music Reviews (CAN)

"It's drifting, slowly, into the void. [...] Everything is so calm and hypnotizing that it's difficult not to hear these [ghosts trying to break through]. It really feels like there are these spirits trapped back there and the longer you listen the more you feel like they could be set free. [...] There was a time when you'd watch television and to indicate that we were going into a dream sequence or flashback it'd create these wavy lines across the screen. This music really feels like it's doing that." - Raised By Cassettes (USA)

"It may be dark and ‘unheimisch’ (uncanny), yet it’s a pleasure to dwell around in it and discover its barely hidden structures. It’s a comforting kind of darkness." - ambientblog.net (NED)

"Ghost Town Burning beside a gong bath,
Ghostly flames flickering long tones
Ghostly drones embers smoulder,
Evolution sparks dread of desolation,
Ever-present wind whirling through the flames,
Siren voices calling from deep within the malaise.
Then The Snow.. falls on smouldering town,
Turning charred remains dreich grey,
Tremulous smoke appears replacing flames,
Eviscerated stumps subsumed by flakes,
Enough drifting snow calm returns,
Sonorous wails beckoning renewal from destruction."
- Whisperin' & Hollerin' (IRE)

"Veiled in thick ambient fogs, beautifully desolate, in which mysterious echoes of the vastness tremble like deep pain. There is comfort in the unfolding waves. Music as incantation, evocation, excavation, catharsis… that draws one into deeper states of attention, feeling, and potential, where spirits are most alive." - Luminous Dash (BEL)




ENGLISH:
Ali Murray is a songwriter/musician from the cold windy Isle of Lewis in the north of Scotland. He writes and releases music under his own name, as well as dark introspective ambient music under the name The Lonely Bell.

“The Lonely Bell’s “Ghost Town Burning" is a kind of beautiful desolation, where mysterious echoes of the vast expanse vibrate as deep ache. There is comfort in the unfolding waves and possibility - that maybe the haunt was never meant to frighten, only to liberate - a radiant emptiness nestled in the ruin.

Hypnotic, bewitching, and ultimately restorative, this is music as invocation, evocation, excavation, catharsis... a stunning and immersive experience of an unnameable immensity, drawing one into deeper states of attention, feeling and possibility, where spirits are most alive.”

- Katie Griesar, Feb 2023



DEUTSCH:
Ali Murray ist ein Songwriter/Musiker von der kalten, windigen Isle of Lewis im Norden Schottlands. Er schreibt und veröffentlicht Musik unter seinem eigenen Namen sowie dunkle, introspektive Ambient-Musik unter dem Namen The Lonely Bell.

„The Lonely Bells „Ghost Town Burning“ ist eine Art wunderschöne Trostlosigkeit, in der mysteriöse Echos der Weite als tiefer Schmerz vibrieren. Es gibt Trost in den sich entfaltenden Wellen und der Möglichkeit – dass der Spuk vielleicht nie Angst machen, sondern befreien sollte - eine strahlende Leere, eingebettet in die Ruine.

Hypnotisch, verzaubernd und letztendlich erholsam, das ist Musik als Anrufung, Evokation, Ausgrabung, Katharsis ... eine atemberaubende und immersive Erfahrung von ungreifbarer Immensität, die einen in tiefere Zustände der Aufmerksamkeit, des Gefühls und der Möglichkeit zieht, wo die Geister am lebendigsten sind. ”

- Katie Griesar, Februar 2023

credits

released February 24, 2023

All music written, performed, recorded, produced, engineered, mixed and mastered by Ali Murray on the Isle Of Lewis in the north of Scotland using home recording equipment.

Cover Artwork : Greg Nunn
Design & Layout : Alexander Leonard Donat
Contact : thelonelybell@hotmail.com

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Blackjack Illuminist Records Berlin, Germany

CD/tape/vinyl label from Berlin, Germany

Post-punk/ Coldwave/ Shoegaze/ Industrial/ Dreampop/ Synth/ Dreampunk/ Indie/ Ambient /Drone

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