Fingerless never stay in the same spot but continually explore new ways to display their musical prowess and creativity. Their new single ‘Now Words Can Touch It’ maintains their unerring skill at delivering a bucketful of melody, but, as ever, they have switched the delivery mechanism to an atmospheric electronic gurgle that bubbles and squeaks under the vocals. A distant metallic clang and alien noises linger at the very distant edges. It’s the sonic version of the aurora that recently visited this region – mysterious and breathtaking.
Confusingly, the track comes off not the next Fingerless album but one after that – ‘And The Forest of Signs’ – an experimental collection that is inspired by computer games. It’s best to let Marc Cheeseman explain:
The ‘And The Forest of Signs’ project is, at its core, a love letter to classic video game soundtracks and soundscapes. Games like ‘The Dig’ (1995, OST by Michael Land) and ‘The Neverhood’ (1996, OST by Terry Scott Taylor) have such incredibly immersive, evocative, and experimental music that does such a good job of extending and encapsulating the atmosphere and emotions of whatever scene you’re in during the game. And because these are games, not movies or some other medium, the music needs to be subtle enough so that it can be repeated over and over again until you leave/finish the level/area, to just fade into the background and be part of the experience—not the experience itself. Having said that, when you listen to these soundtracks as stand-alone albums they are absolutely awesome… There’s a whole landscape of classic albums out there that people rarely talk about—but they’re out there!
So for this album, then, the basic idea is that it’s a soundtrack for a video game that doesn’t exist (yet…?). But this idea is just a jumping-off point, it’s a way of thinking about the instrumentation, the song themes/lyrics, etc. Most of the music on the album would be way too distracting to be effective ambient background music for a real game—though, if anyone knows any game designers that are looking for a project… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Cheeseman says of the single:
The theme of the song is about trying to understand life and our lived reality. As we get
older, do we really understand life more? Or do we understand it less than when we were
younger? Do we merely become further and further embedded in our cultural/social
games and practical activities that we lose some sort of juvenile, intuitive insight into what
it really means to be here? Look, I’m having a bit of trouble explaining this properly. I’m not
sure how to phrase the question adequately. I’m not even sure what the question is. No
words can reach it…
As erudite and astute as ever, this seeps into the the atmospheric elements of the track:
‘No Words Can Reach It’ is out today through the magnificent 4000 Records and available to download and stream via all the usual sites and through the link above.
Feature Photograph: Warwick Epiha
