Skyray — Womb

Space Age Recordings ORBIT018CD 1999

70.20 (Simpson)

Atmospheric ambient album by one time Cope collaborator Paul Simpson.

Womb — not weighty, without gravitas but elemental in the sense that it seems to have existed forever. When you ‘join’ this album it invokes a familiar sense of unease, as though its backdrop has been playing silently away to itself while you were unaware. Or else you knew it was there but couldn’t quite hear it.

It’s a claustrophobic start. A heartbeat and Darth Vader breathing — all a little eerie. Bubbles, blips and distorted vocal emissions melt into the soundscape. Three minutes gone and you are starting to suffocate. It’s highly uncomfortable, like a bad trip. You find yourself yearning for normality – rhetorically you state, ‘this is going to go on for ever…isn’t it?’ It’s best not to fight against it, but to let it flow over you. You in turn become a part of the flow.- syncopating your breathing with the rhythmic inhalation/exhalation. Just as you resign yourself to Womb’s foreverness a ‘Day Tripper’ drone kicks in. Perhaps a nod to the Simpson’s Liverpudlian counterparts – perhaps not. 

It’s 7 min 14 secs and we are treated to a languid, liquid bass groove. It’s highly reminiscent of the artists ‘Mind Lagoons’ which was to be released simultaneously on Ochre Records. The impact of the groove is akin to a heavy weight boxer coming at you off the ropes. His arrival serving to liberate from what has come before, should any release be deemed necessary, accelerating you into another world. In reality it’s all very subtle but this pugilist makes a memorable entrance. 

Twenty minutes in and we are back to breathing, bubbles and drones. We find these developing into underwater sonic pulses and whale noises. By 23.40 they are alien whales and our boxer friend has reappeared. He is somewhat muted — like he has not been invited to the party – sent to Coventry and cast adrift perching on the meniscus. Thankfully, our boxer is a tenacious bastard and he will be heard. Breaking through, winning the occasional battle before ebbing away again. And so it goes on — to and fro; these worlds can’t exist together – but they have to. It is clear there will be no winners here. They exist despite of each other. 

33.40 — backward beats and heartbeats and then the breathing takes over. You thought you had escaped, it’s hard to fight a sinking feeling. It’s a painful memory, but mercifully short-lived. Finally they, as we, understand — this juxtaposition makes perfect sense. From then on, all these elements coexist. Sometimes it is a battle royale, sometimes a glorious orgy, but always with sufficient headspace for any one of them to take centre stage and do a solo spot.
And we the listener can be wherever we want to be; by simply plunging our heads under the amniotic fluid until we run out of breath.

Womb is a triumph despite being overly long. It clear that it misses occasionally but has enough greatness in it to make it great. While ‘Womb’ fails to get to where the glorious ‘Mind Lagoons’ glides so effortlessly, it does journey to places that release is too polite to venture. It is a cyclic listen in many respects, and curiously, it is only when you arrive back at where you started, that you realise you are a flight or two up.

Will deBeest