Space. Outer space. Inner space. Mental space. Cyber space. Air space. Sound waves traveling in the open to the ear, bouncing through neurons like ocean waves onto the imagination. Ambient, never given the same urgent attention as the techno beats of Chicago and Detroit, is nevertheless the “space” in which it all happened. Brian Eno, who coined the musical term “ambient,” did not so much invent it, as bring our attention to it. And of all the sonic architects that have come since, Global Communication elevated its mystery highest of all.
Among their various stellar projects, including Jedi Knights and Reload, it still seems too few know of or know why Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton’s long-going Global Communication is deservedly their most famous. The most succinct answer why is numerical: 76:14. Released on the shoegazing Dedicated label, their masterpiece bested the lush ambient formulas of the early 1990s, its warm jets and soft beats flawlessly blending sensual romanticism with intellectual acuity. It has few sharp edges, but its cumulative impact, building over 76 minutes and 14 seconds of expansive meditation, cuts deep to the core, opening the soul to wonder.
A quick favorite of aficionados and newcomers alike, Global Communication’s landmark album is also the perfect first dip for those wary of “repetitive” beats. It’s easy come, easy go. Yet for all of its pretensions to heaven on earth, Pritchard and Middleton’s vaporized techno also lives on a tension between restraint and danger. The epic ‘Obselon Minos,’ a sleepy paradise of gentle piano chords and deep bleeding bass, is their ultimate paragon and perhaps the best ambient track of the ’90s.
Deep deep down in those currents that flow throughout ‘Obselon Minos’ and 76:14 was a history of lived electronic experience that began with Middleton’s journey to the town of Taunton, where he met Pritchard at a night out, homing onto his taste behind the DJ decks. Middleton hailed from Cornwall and was a friend of Richard D. James — the Aphex Twin — so he was fast and early on his search for the sublime, promoting James’ first record as the Aphex Twin and collaborating on ‘En Trance To Exit’ on the first Analogue Bubblebath release. But connecting with Pritchard would lead to an electronic body of work equal in potency.
“He came and introduced himself to me,” Pritchard recalled to Fact Magazine in 2011 of their meeting. “Told me he did some stuff with this guy called the Aphex Twin, who no one had heard about at that point, and talked about their scene down in Cornwall. We hit it off, and started hanging out. He played me loads of Aphex’s stuff off cassette and I was like fucking hell – what’s this?! Fucking nuts! Tom — born on the same day as Aphex and they were part of that scene with the Rephlex crew, people like Grant Wilson-Claridge, Manuel who now does artwork for Hyperdub — this little crew who played in Truro and around there.”
That early taste of do-it-yourself music production gave them the fire to push fast and hard into the underground music scene, inspired by Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk and Detroit techno legends like Juan Atkins. “I remember going to London on the train with boxes of white labels and taking them round the record stores on a sale or return basis,” Middleton told Red Bull Music Academy in 2012. “That was my introduction to the actual physical distribution of music, and it was interesting that we both did the ‘schlepping it’ on the train to London with boxes of records, and selling them.”
It’s that toil combined with musical know-how that one hears deep in the tides of 76:14. Middleton’s classical training is in evidence throughout, including Pritchard’s guitar-player poise, giving their seamless audio journey perfectly timed injections of drama and wakefulness. From Claude Debussy and Erik Satie to Eno, Herbie Hancock, Vangelis, Talk Talk and Tangerine Dream, the pair would bring a wealth of influences to their work. Pretty ornamentalism hangs over big minimal waves of sound. Swoops, drips and gaseous harmonies evoke a dream cloud that rains and washes away hardened emotions. The pair called their attitude “emotions in sound.”
“You gather inspiration from hearing how other people tell a story in sound,” Middleton noted in the same interview, explaining how Peter Gabriel’s spiritualist Last Temptation of Christ album was a particularly strong influence. “We were really excited by what we could do in that context. That led to these Global Communication explorations, finding the ‘Emotions In Sound’ concept, using the natural rhythms, like the heartbeat for the very first track, as the backbone to the track rather than a drumbeat, and then exploring dub reggae echo patterns, cinematic textures, and…bingo!”
The result was an auditory odyssey both vast in its ambitions and dense in its emotional content. Every melody, sound and groove was carefully placed. Like any great film or story, 76:14 is no cakewalk. Like a good fairy tale or mystery, it keeps its dark places and loses you in a maze of fantastical dimensions. And underlying every second is an air of anxious discovery: ‘9:25′ begins with whispers and makes its way into a ghostly valley, a will-o’-the-wisp melody guiding you over trickling beats to ‘9:31,’ a throbbing wasteland of lonely prettiness.
A European flavor is all over Global Communication’s gorgeous concoctions. But Pritchard and Middleton were keenly devoted to Detroit techno too, especially the epochal melancholy of Derrick May, Carl Craig and Kenny Larkin. (Their invincible remixes and work as Reload is proof positive: Reload’s ‘Amenity’ remains perhaps the greatest techno paean of all time.) Rhythm, while understated here, is a prime guest even when only in spirit: ‘7:39’ taps along at an exciting pace, swooning to flashes of light while ‘8:07′ builds on a direct reinvention of Tangerine Dream’s ‘Love On A Real Train’ with aching devotion, its skittering high-hats rising to whirling strings and the bittersweet sighs of heartsick synths.
The final ’12:18’ puts an exclamation mark on these sacraments, pushing us off into the last horizon, like Charon‘s boat at the shores of the river Styx. But it’s not really sadness here at the gates to infinity. The angelic gasps and heartbreaking beauty of its ever expanding gestures brings to mind what one believes must be a true vision of the sweet hereafter. This is life-affirming stuff, the sonic equivalent of a desert oasis. For latecomers, a 10-year anniversary remaster in 2005 included bonus tracks of the English duo’s other towering moments as Global Communication: the epic space house splendor of ‘The Deep,’ the awestruck twinkles of ‘The Biosphere’ and the submerged drifts of ‘Incidental Harmony’ and ‘Sensorama.’
Global Communication also made huge marks over the years with their remixes and subtle interpretations of other artists, making the Global Communication “treatment” the ultimate sought-after stamp of approval or reinvention. Remixes of Lamb, Warp 69, Azymuth, The Grid, and Japanese band Softballet — their dub mix of ‘Ride’ reigning as the supreme low-slung sky-high soul tripper of the electronic era — reveal a band with no match in the more meditative reaches of the electronica revolution; or Pentamorous Metamorphosis, their “retranslation” of Chapterhouse — the indispensable companion mini-album to 76:14, with its ‘Gamma Phase’ remaining one of electronica’s most epic moments — is another mind-blower on a trip out of this world.
In 2007, The Guardian newspaper included 76:14 as one of their 1000 albums to hear before you die. Given its zero gravity tears, Global Communication’s contribution would in fact do well right before any life passage, from birth to death. It’s not dolorous. It’s liberating. For their communication is not just an ambient or an interstellar space thing. It’s a human thing — a deeply emotional thing.
Track Listing:
1. 4:02
2. 14:31 (Obselon Minos)
3. 9:25
4. 9:39
5. 7:39
6. 0:54
7. 8:07
8. 5:23
9. 4:14
10. 12:18
Bonus tracks on 2005 re-release:
1. The Groove
2. The Way
3. The Deep
4. The Biosphere
5. Incidental Harmony
6. Sublime Creation
7. Sensorama