Award-winning filmmaker Adam Stafford always has something to say when making music, but here it’s done via the medium of sound.
Eight instrumentals capture the threat of global warming with a mix of complex atmospherica and claustrophobically insistent tunes that mix his usual indie rock with an almost modern classical twist.
Inspired by the climate crisis, it’s appropriately uneasy listening, Stafford’s trademark loops formed of little piano motifs conjuring the feel of being breathlessly being pursued by an unseen enemy.
‘Carnivore of Lawns’ is built on an urgent, glitchy piano loop, while single ‘Ruptured Telecine’ is as close as we get to pop – yes, it has vocals but of the sinisterly distorted variety, plus trippy beats dancing beneath insistently repeated guitar lines.
‘For Fawn’ is almost purely keyboard, in the vein of Satie as reinterpreted by Tomita, while ‘Threnody For February Swallows’ – birds which shouldn’t be here till summer – just needs a David Attenborough narration.
However, closer ‘Thappies Clag’ has the noisy feel of Mogwai if accompanied by a string section – an uplifting close to a soundtrack for the collapse of civilisation.
‘Trophic Asynchrony’ is out now. This article originally appeared in the Sunderland Echo.