KIRK BARLEY - Lux - LP - Vinyl [MAR 21]

LP - Limited Edition Black Vinyl. Only 300 copies pressed for worldwide in this edition.  

Another foggy day in Yorkshire. A steel grey sky. Raindrops tracing one another down the windowpane. Kirk Barley sits in his studio and assembles compositions from scraps of found sound and live instrumentation. Melodies swell, withdraw and repeat like waves. Time slows. Accelerates. Slows again. The light bends, tweaked at the edges. Twisted by rhythms that never quite resolve.

Written, recorded and produced by Barley in Yorkshire in early 2024, Lux picks up where 2023 LP Marionette leaves off, conjuring a mystical, reflective space between formal minimalism and sonic imaginaries of northern landscapes.

And yet, where Marionette relied at times on more recognisable field recordings, Lux leans into Barley’s skill as an instrumentalist and sound designer, working from a palette of short samples and utilising a variety of alternate tuning systems to build, layer and coax his compositions into being. Most evident on tracks ‘Vita’, ‘Sprite’ and ‘Descendent’, these tunings create an otherworldly harmonic language that is easier to perceive than describe.

“Marionette perfects a curious kind of organic minimalism on acoustic instruments, in the vein of Moondog or Lonnie Holley.” - The Guardian

“Otherworldliness to the quotidian soundscapes of the natural world”
- The Vinyl Factory

“Yorkshire born instrumentalist makes minimalist gold” - Uncut, 8/10

“Minimalist electronics to land somewhere between Andrew Pekler-esque oddity and Joh Hassell-style immersion” - DJ Magazine

“Bucolic electronics that split the difference between Hassell and Boards of Canada, and venture serenely into the weird and the eerie” - World Of Echo

Tracklist: 

Side A
1. Cache
2. Vita
3. Verre 
4. Descendent

Side B
1. Sprite
2. Balanced
3. Lux