The Lonely Bell - The Outer Banks

The Lonely Bell is Ali Murray, a songwriter and ambient drone musician from the Isle of Lewis. It's a place steeped in history and mystery, with standing stones and Norse and iron age structures peppering the landscape of this small inhabited isle in the north of Scotland. It's an ideal location inspiring and informing the unhurried drone and drift of the deeply introspective The Lonely Bell. The Outer Banks follows the haunting desolation of the widely acclaimed Ghost Town Burning with 2 tracks infused with a timeless hazy quality that is both alluring and comforting.

A sustained hushed drone runs throughout 'The Outer Banks' but listen closely and obscured underneath is a ghostly orchestra. Shadowed by the ambience and almost hidden, this small ensemble of strings and cello plays forgotten melodies as if beamed in from the past. A time slip occurs midway through, and we're now on a riverbank accompanied by bird chirps and the sound of feet sauntering alongside a rippling stream. The gentle shimmer of acoustic guitar chime blurs the placement of time.

'Fires of Dawn' is much more dreamy, with soft melancholic tones gently unfurling but never really moving forward until it slowly swells and absorbs gentle orchestral ambience. Even here, while thoughts appear and drift, you almost feel rooted to the spot, captured and enraptured by a feeling of eternally dreaming, as subtle nebulous fragments emerge from the repetitious patterns.

As someone more accustomed to reverberations and cavernous quakes, The Lonely Bell seem more concerned about mapping out a space around memory and place. The Outer Banks builds on the fog bound spectral drone presence of Ghost Town Burning, incorporating location recordings into their mesmerising and hypnotic layers of drone filled ambience creating an ideal conduit for introspection, reflection and contemplation. This is so serene and gorgeous The Outer Banks are well worth exploring. The Outer Banks is released digitally and as a limited edition cassette tape from Frosti bandcamp