Encomiast / The Copper Thieves — 139 Nevada

139 Nevada, Central City, Colorado has been the address of the Belvidere Theatre since it opened in 1875. Claims that it’s haunted attracted local musicians Ross Hagen and Neville Harson to make some recordings inside the building, hoping to reveal electronic voice phenomena, perhaps left behind by previous artistes. Unfortunately, the ghosts refused to perform but the combination of an old grand piano resting on the stage and a charged atmosphere prompted further recordings of improvisations with assorted musicians, whose manipulated results occupy the two disks in this set.

The first disk, subtitled ‘masked mirror’, reveals the space gradually and deliberately in fragile, meditative gestures. Starting with a simple, ethnic flute that politely welcomes the assistance of the spirits, it soon evaporates into ethereal atmospherics with scuttling movements of disturbed insects, while a deep, solemn piano note briefly keeps a slow pulse. Sonorities from a gong-like drone rise and fall throughout, like the illuminated pathways of dust particles when opening the curtains on an old room. Passages of piano reminiscent of incidental horror movie music occasionally trickles through the debris, but for the most part the sparest of events, from the treated metallic percussion of cymbals or xylophones to clock chimes and guitar, are used to trigger concentric ripples of reverberations defined by the limits of the antiquated theatre’s interior.

‘Slam Your Doors in Golden Silence’, the name of the second disk, is taken from a Jacques Tati film from 1967 (Playtime) which features a door made of material that dampens all sound. More damp than dampened, it maintains the mood cast by the first disk, but is more melodic, rhythmic and anecdotal than masked mirror’s symphonious tour of the empty theatre’s ambience. Here, the palette is expanded to bring in what could be music boxes, digeridoo, dulcimers and the hoots and whinnying of unknown animals. But the dominating aura of the old building persists in its arcane, plaintive influence despite the occasional brief folk refrain. ‘A Liminal Hymnal’ (which has previously appeared on a tribute to Jhonn Balance compilation - Full Cold Moon - making it even more apparent that these musicians worship at the altar of Coil) is loose and random with digitised shivers appearing at the edges of glassy tones accompanying a prepared piano. While wailing souls desperately reach out amidst ‘The Talking Clock’s insistent, chase-scene beat.

This treatment of real, living voices that appears throughout perhaps illustrates what was hoped for from the initial EVP aspirations. Tracks like ‘My Hooded Voice, Lost’, ‘Sing Uprising II’ and ‘Something Shines Through’, exhibit an expert sculpting of sound and compositional flair that is behind139 Nevada’s affecting and haunted explorations. Viewed in this way, the album is a prime example of turning failure into success: not disheartened by the inability to yield utterances from beyond the grave, Ross and Neville saw potential in a space suffused with something out of the usual and set about using its presence in a more considered, less random and, consequently, far more vivid and chilling way.