VAUGHAN, CHARLES - Pylon Reveries (Sealed) (CD)

Pylon Reveries, the fourth release by the mysterious Charles Vaughan, is a rumination on connection and disconnection. The idea that (nearly) every settlement is connected to the national power grid by the iron giants that straddle the countryside like mysterious sentinels watching over us. And that, in spite of this connectivity and, of course, the connectivity of the internet, we as people don't often connect as well as we ought to. We're overloaded by data, that seems to obfuscate rather than enlighten. Pylon Reveries is also about the need to disconnect. It's about being in the middle of nowhere and yet finding yourself reminded of everything via the hums and crackles of pure electricity that course through the cables overhead and the lonesome substations that inhabit the remotest of places. It's a love letter to the ubiquitous totems of utility that inanimately populate our landscape and yet are a source of fascination and intrigue.