Quiet Places

For today’s exclusive track premiere, I am featuring a piece from the second volume of music by a UK trio called Quiet Places, consisting of Dennis White, Charlie May, and Dave Gardner. Their debut release, appropriately titled Volume 1, showed up on my radar back in 2020 [has it really been that long?] by way of Ryan Griffin‘s meticulously curated A Strangely Isolated Place imprint, the output of which I consistently and hungrily consume. As is foreshadowed with the title, we are now gifted with Volume 2 of this group’s creations, featuring four long-players, each taking up an entire side on this gorgeous marbled 2×12″ release [the piece you are hearing today is not on the album, and is a digital-only special bonus track]. As I described the first volume three years ago, the swirling atmospheres in a haze-inducing daydream, the humming synth pads with the layers built upon each one, and the kaleidoscope of sampled snippets are back again in Volume 2 to snatch me back from this reality and drop me into times when Boards of Canada, Global Communication and The Future Sound of London soundtracked my days. On their latest for ASIP, the trio once again command the sonic artistry and deep knowledge of the stylistic snapshots that are stitching up my memories into a cohesive whole. This is a welcome escape from the bombardment of the “usual”, a future flashback into the past of the present, a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop.

Minimal in context and retaining the untitled track approach, the trio of producers, well versed in a variety of music styles between them, leave the music and the subliminal messages contained within as the descriptor. Finding moments of melody amongst the wide landscape of abstract sounds and samples is the only glimpse of reality you’ll find down here.

Once again, the full album is officially out on July 7th, 2023, available directly via ASIP as a digital download or a lovely Lupo-mastered slab of wax. If this is your first foray into this project, please begin with Volume 1. Highly recommended.