Mortal Morning - The Lost Line (2013)

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This EP may be made entirely of train sounds, but it doesn’t always sound like a train.  The set tumbles through the timbres of drone, electronics, and jazz like a late night train passing by deserted stations; Mortal Morning (Michael Gardiner) builds pieces from aural wreckage like a salvager from a scrapyard.  The result is an intriguing collection filled with “can you name it?” sources: whistles, bells, crossing gates, the click-clack of metal wheels on rails.  The bonus: these are also fully-fledged compositions.

If one travels often by rail, one grows used to hearing the juxtaposition of steady tempos and sudden sounds.  The longer the journey and the later the hour, the more likely one will be lulled to sleep by the former notes, only to be awoken by sudden screeches or conductors’ announcements.  The Lost Line captures this incongruity – sleep, don’t sleep – by lengthening the time in which each tempo is steady, but by varying the sources from track to track (pun intended).  As soon as one grows accustomed to a certain pace, one relaxes, until it changes again.  ”Vanishing Point” sounds harsh at first, but develops what one would be hard-pressed not to call a melody mid-piece.  By the end, it sounds like a jazz solo, a jumble of horns riffing on a theme.  Wow, can that kid blow!  It’s a bird, it’s Superman – no, it’s a train!
“In the Fog” sounds like cellos warming, until the introduction of a distorted voice (what station again?) leads to an amplified alarm.  In “Winter”, a deep whistle acts as the drum, while a series of elongated blasts serve as synth.  The clearest train sounds emerge in the evocative finale, “On the Moors”, which reminds us of what we’ve been listening to all along.  The signal horn blows, the crossing gate, lowers, the pulse distortion is heightened as the train whips through the station.
Mortal Morning‘s project began as a single piece then developed into an EP.  There’s certainly room to expand the project into an album.  This may mean a little extra travel time, perhaps a research trip to a place with vintage engines.  The irony of such a trip is that Gardiner would not be using the train to get to a place; the train itself would be the subject, making literal the statement, “the journey is the destination”.  We encourage the artist to continue on this line.  (Richard Allen)