Review

A bridge can provide a path from one place to another, but it can also be a means of suspension. If you match title to sound-induced association, A Bridge Over The Lagoon acts more as the latter; at a minimum, it’s auditorily faithful to an environment in which nothing happens fast. It is the debut LP of Last Light, which comprises Ben Spiers and Dean Brown.

The two men are New Zealanders who transplanted to England in 2008. Spiers has recorded under his own name and with Anthony Milton, Campbell Kneale, and 1/3 Octave Band; Brown performs as Little Skull and has been part of Nova Scotia and Negative Eh. Despite each of them having been known to each other prior to their synchronous shift, and despite both having been involved in music both prior to and after their respective migrations, they didn’t get around to collaborating until the middle of 2023, when they convened for one day at Witney, a town near Oxford whose municipal website boasts of its stunning countryside.

If geography is a prompt, it’s safe to suppose that Spiers and Brown spent little time looking out the window while they recorded. This LP’s six tracks are about as anti-bucolic as an automobile graveyard whose contents have been rusting away since the lead was taken out of gasoline. They range in length from 2:20 to 18:14, but each imparts a sense of stasis that immune is palpable change. Both the tooth-drilling electric guitar and the buzzing electric organ on “Hills Turn Black,” for example, shift in pitch, the one moving up while the other descends and vice versa. But their constant adjustments in proximity feel less like a representation of change than a demarcation of a zone that contains movement, but never lets it leave. And while “A Gulf Of Lions” is an undeniably active slugfest between feedback tones, there’s no resolution, no escape. The players might as well be gladiators doomed never to leave the stadium, no matter who wins.

None of these statements are critical; rather, they celebrate the fact that Last Light scales a peak that most would never look at, let along climb. A Bridge Over The Lagoon is an heir to fellow New Zealanders Surface Of The Earth and RST in their treatment of abrasive, electric sound as raw material to be formed into rough but very particularly selected shapes.