Skipper

Ambient but not a dance album, modern-classical without any of the academic seriousness or rigidity that connotes, and finally a world-beating, thoroughly modern pop record, this marvellous debut from Dubliner Daniel Figgis is an impressionistic gem.

It’s wordless but full of the noise of and clamour of humanity, profoundly meticulous but thrumming with childlike fun and warm absurdity.

Originally released six years ago – in more subtlety-hostile, grunge-turning-into-Britpop times – Skipper has its roots in the work of early sampler-composers like John Cage. Figgis is, perhaps, a link between composers like Cage and the gentler, poppier, more contemporary instincts which led Brian Eno to invent the term ‘ambient’.

Each song is full of unidentifiable gurglings, squeaks and rustles – lending the record a mood of almost-remembered dreams and nearly-grasped memory – and a read of the instrument list does not disappoint. In addition to dolefully sweet harmonium, lushly weaving strings (think a lighthearted Gorecki) and brass, Figgis’ palette includes things called ‘badly treated piano’ and ‘swarm guitar,’ not to mention ‘clock,’ ‘swing’ and, insanely, ‘book.’

A vaguely seafaring theme murmurs throughout, with rippling underwater noises and the kind of breathing and juddering sounds you hear from a boat or near the water’s edge. And all human life is visible from here: from the shimmering sunset swell of ‘Glimmer,’ to the delightfully shivery fairytale of ‘Alison Creaking,’ to the shattered My Bloody Valentine viola and turntable heartbeat of ‘Egg & Anchor.’

An overwhelming, surreal, delirious, happy-making stunner.