Such a strategy seems to have some alignment with Leyland Kirby’s drowned 78rpm records, but transfers the narrative to the wagon trails and frontier towns of the nineteenth-century Midwest. In doing so Gould and Blum draw on musical cues from Morricone’s Spaghetthi soundtracks instead of Kirby’s haunted ballroom. A tinny upright Saloon-bar piano forms the basis of the opening and closing theme that slowly and stubbornly repeats its short refrain all the while being threatened with extinction by the drop-outs and crumbling instability purposefully distorting the recording. Meanwhile, the country twang of steel guitars sadly lope around tracks like ‘Sundown’ and ‘Notes from the Field’ maintaining a desert vigil for lives long since past while the more ominous layers of cinematic synth pads waft in and out of rustling field recordings of dry bells clanking in the distance.

While richly evocative of a time and place, the album’s titles allude to a more specific narrative that eludes the listener and by the end of its hour the secrets of the Talking Book are no clearer, remaining a soundtrack of sonic fragments that reference similar atmospheres. Structurally it all feels somewhat arbitrary too as extended layers drenched in reverb fade in, loop around and fade out while the more regular instrumentation, although often threatening to evolve further, follows the same hazy dynamics, rendering individual tracks indistinct and forgettable. And maybe this is the point, but without the footholds of a clearer narrative or more contrasting dramatics ‘The Talking Book’ can feel like it’s decaying in its own dark ambient mist at times