news
photosZap! Bang! Magazin - 25 April 2007 (The House On The Causeway)
"The House on the Causeway is the third album from post-rockers Reigns, again using very individual surroundings to record tracks with characteristics of that space. Wessex-based Tim and Roo Farthing mused over a seemingly bottomless hole found on the Somerset Downs for 2002’s We Lowered a Microphone into the Ground and for their follow-up Styne Vallis they visited a submerged village that had been evacuated and strategically flooded in 1970 to make way for a reservoir. The House on the Causeway began development when the Farthing brothers stumbled upon a house while shrouded by fog on a causeway into the English Channel between Black Ven and Golden Cap. There they recorded the sounds which make up this eerie, conceptual album with a haunting feel and ghostly presence matching the character of their sudden find.
Like a soundtrack to a chilling movie, The House on the Causeway builds simple melodies with familiar, calming instruments such as the piano or soft synths and drops more disconcerting noises, glitches and vocals to unnerve the listener. on “Bad Slate” and “Mab Crease” almost spoken lyrics describe dark places, though the former opts for a haunting backing and the latter’s rising guitars make the track almost triumphant. Coming at the start and midway trough the album, it’s a suggestion of how the unfamiliarity of the house and causeway slowly dissolves into an atmosphere which still evokes disorientation though, due to a sustained period within it, the fog is no longer a complete stranger — more of a friendly face with no name.
The sense the The House on the Causeway is heading his way comes with a tantalising moments of joy on “Mirrors at Night” which has an enchanted forest feel, a place you can lost and feel free, though in the final tracks Reigns reveal this was perhaps a false dawn. On “Take it Down” and “The Black Cramp” they become moody once more, gripped by paranoia and being devoured by darkness as the “(Endplate)” arrives. This certainly isn’t an album you can dip in and out of as on their own the tracks merely hint at a wider context; hearing them from first beat to final fade will transport you to the remote spot Reigns found as you experience their fears. The House on the Causeway is an impressive challenging work which devours you completely and may well leave your senses shaken. "
Mike Barnard
firstcoastnews (The House On The Causeway)
"Reigns is a band who don't have members but operatives. These operatives, A & B, began recording for the Reigns organization in 2002 and have recorded two previous albums under this moniker. Their third album, The House on the Causeway, centers around a small man made promontory of granite cobbles that extend a half mile out into the English Channel. A strange idea for an album to be sure, but as with previous Reigns albums, the strangest of ideas becomes ideal fodder for the Operatives to experiment with.
A eerie and spooky record, The House on the Causeway is predominantly and ambient record that sounds as if a band of ghosts were living in the house and recorded the noises and sounds they make as they float around the property. It's creepy stuff, that's swirly, frail, and quiet that occasionally has otherworldly voices, sounds of paper tearing, sparsely played piano, ethereal guitar riffs, and a drum machine set to barely there. It's quite fascinating stuff that will scare the bejesus out of you while enveloping your ears and imagination.
Reigns are constantly experimenting with the spectrum of sound on this record, their use of found sounds, with guitars, effects, voices and other things contribute to the albums unearthly, disemobdied feel. As the songs phase in and out of your speakers, and sounds come and go, The House on the Causeway is made to feel as though it's sitting on your shoulder creating this imaginative soundtrack to a movie that your part of and a movie you can't get out of. It's liberating stuff for your mind, as you can't help but put together pictures and scenes that fit each of the songs haunting nature. The House on the Causeway is truly an incidental soundtrack waiting for a movie to happen around it.
"Mirrors at Night,"and "Your Hand Is Frozen," are songs that create a real sense of time and space and hint back to works by other artists like Bill Nelson, O Yuki Conjugate, and In The Nursery. These artists like Reigns create worlds of sound for your mind to explore and spend eternity in; their supernatural ghostly environments are captivating and beautiful and encourage repeat visits. The House on the Causeway is just like that; a mysterious and entertaining record that will haunt you and keep your brain working overtime for a very, very long. What more could you ask for in an album? Not much, I would think. So come spend time at the The House on the Causeway and it's granite cobbles, you may never leave."
URB Magazine (The House On The Causeway)
"Tim and Roo Farthing seem to be slowly drifting away from the eerie electronic style that distinguished them at the beginning of their career. Their latest release is seeped in a familiar stew of creepy sounds, however they’ve peppered the familiar haunted electronic ambience and distorted spoken word vocals with calm, transcendent piano-driven pieces, the first example being “Mirrors at Night,” which also features the soft raining plinks of an acoustic guitar. Electronic music and lyrics nearly become side notes here, splitting the album’s 11 tracks almost evenly with the new softer compositional sound. Reigns adamantly shows that they’ve evolved, refusing to be stagnated or locked into a category that they themselves created. If We Buried A Microphone Under the Ground was about capturing the darkness of the human heart, Causeway seems to be about calmly accepting the afterlife and the unknown. It’s a nicely developed concept and seems tailor-fit for the new sound. The liner notes include bare sketches of the different “rooms” (tracks) of The House on the Causeway as part of the supposed investigation of a murder scene. Listening to the scuttling, scratching, and ethereal voices that are embedded into the tracks further the impression of the old haunted house. An ambitious concept that paints the mental picture intended is a good one. This is a nice piece of ambient work to add to the catalogue of Operatives A & B. (4/5)"
Leicester Bangs (The House On The Causeway)
"'The House On The Causeway' is electronic musicians Reigns' third studio LP, and is the musical equivalent of a snowstorm in northern Russia. At times violent and at others frigidly cold and still, 'Causeway' is, ultimately, a beautiful scope of experimental electronic-folk seen through a broken kaleidoscope of monotone colour. Album opener '(Frontplane)' sets the record's landscape perfectly - echoing pianos, heavy, low synths and an uncanny sense of dread and trepidation. There are rare - and not entirely unwelcome - rays of sunshine though in tracks like 'Mirrors At Night' and the haunted but dazzling 'Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen'. Like the (criminally) underrated Knife album 'Silent Shout', 'The House On The Causeway' is dark and narrative-esque, themed throughout with stories about winter, classical industrial landscapes and, of course, that haunted house on the causeway. If M83 makes the kind of electronic music that uplifts you to a place that is at once bright and exhilarating, Reigns pulls you down into the gutters and the marshy earth, but despite that, is as equally exquisite and surreal. "
Clash Music (The House On The Causeway)
"The simplest things can shit me up.
Take that recent ad for Radio 4’s sci-fi season on the BBC. Aired after 9pm it might’ve been, and an adult I was last I looked in the mirror, but boy did it make its mark. Now, I at least partially cover my eyes whenever it's on.
Aliens, monsters, ghouls and goblins – nah, ta, see ‘em and figure I’m not into that nonsense. But take something that’s everyday and twist it so very slightly and you’re talking a whole new language, where every vowel’s a shiver up the spine and alliteration can stop the heart dead. It’s the subverting of the standard that chills, where the blur of your peripheral vision clears for just a split second long enough to spy something that shouldn’t be there.
This is what Reigns achieve, albeit with sound: a sense of threat, terror even, that’s only detectable when you look or listen hard enough, against your better judgement. Just like I can (just about) watch that above-linked clip and twitch uncomfortably every time, so each Reigns album, this being their third, returns to my stereo every few months to unsettle me anew. There’s so much beauty in what they craft that it’s easy to slip into a comfortable state of security, only to suddenly have a bolt of lightning shot up your arse courtesy of some unholy noise or other.
The previous two Reigns LPs – ‘We Lowered A Microphone Into The Ground’ and ‘Styne Vallis’ – were founded upon the notion that found sounds and field recordings comprised the backbone of each track; that the subsequent malevolent ambience was entirely (un)natural, and not the making of the musicians involved, who simply embellished what they discovered only so very slightly as to give it a greater structure. Here we’re presented with a slightly more straightforward collection of tracks, with more typical instrumentation coming to the fore. But it doesn’t make ‘The House On The Causeway’ any less of a riveting listen.
Take, for example, ‘Crex, Crex, Crex’. Sitting at the record’s centre, the track’s a mechanical drone which fades away to make room for slow-mo beats and deadpan vocals – so far, so traditional (albeit in an experimental context). But then there’s a shift, and sounds rise higher in the mix, sounds that shouldn’t have a place on a song you thought you had pegged for that first minute; for its final minute it wails and screams, My Bloody Valentine butchered by a dozen ghosts in any number of machines. And it’s this aesthetic that shines brightest – the establishing of a rhythm only to rip it asunder it with something you never saw coming.
It’s not all dread and distress, though – as with previous albums, our pair of protagonists allow moments of real splendour to rise through the thick soup of playfully spooky samples. So, ‘Take It Down’ is a mystery wrapped inside a wonderfully simple, entrancing piano line; ‘Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen’ prettier still in its delicate arrangement, although here a chattering vocal threatens to turn the piece on its head, a smile to a scowl, a grin to a grimace. This balance, the dance between hope and a fate you wouldn't wish upon one you despised, is maintained throughout, so that each piece seesaws from the light of an exit and subsequent salvation, to the light at the end of a tunnel you didn't expect to be heading down so soon.
Play ‘The House On The Causeway’ at a background level and you can appreciate its instrumental charms – the way concise beats are weaved through and around piano and guitar work with precision and a developed regard for accessibility: while the duo’s roots are experimental, this isn’t a record that’ll take too much digesting for an initial impression to settle. But listen on headphones, silence all around you, in a dark room… well.
The simplest things might well shit you up, too."
Mike Diver
Exclaim! (The House On The Causeway)
"Steeped in the kind of night sweats sourced from Poe to The Blair Witch, UK brothers Tim and Roo Farthing have brewed a third album of foggy legends. Recording as Operatives A and B, the brothers allegedly explored and recorded musical phenomena and stories they discovered within the titular house, finding themselves stranded there for two days. The tales include a father isolating his daughters with the lie of an apocalypse and a widow pining on the shore for a husband lost at sea decades ago. These silver-tinted portraits are described in deadpan vocals and framed by music that fuses '70s horror soundtracks to chamber classical piano and bruised electronic pulses. The instrumentals are a kind of spirit photography, with subliminal voices, rattling coins and shredding paper occasionally rising up in the mix. It's served up like a modernized Hammer horror film: the House of Usher with elevators and haunted high speed internet."
Vain Zine (The House on the Causeway)
"I like this because it's emphatically bleak in parts, yet radiantly optimistic others; like a typical British day really.
Get the CD version because the album art is superb. The spooky house on the front cover reminded me of the haunted house at Disney or the Gothic Adams Family residence. The booklet carries on the theme with illustrations of each of the rooms of the house. It's well thought out and looks rather luscious.
The music speaks for itself. This is a foray into the realms of indie electronica of the highest order. I can smell soundtrack material all over this. My favourite track has to be the eerie and somewhat frightening 'Crex, Crex, Crex' - it really had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
I think I'll dig out my old nightlight tonight... (4/5)
"
Delusions of Adequacy (The House on the Causeway)
"Pastoral imagery in music is nothing new. Beehoven had it pretty well figured out back in 1803 with his Symphony No. 6, in which five movements depict countryside scenes of merriment and bucolic bliss put on hold by an unexpectedly turbulent thunderstorm. The brothers Farthing (Tim and Roo) and their project Reigns have made a career out of exploiting the thunderstorm; examining the darker imagery of nature through a delicious mixture of synth bass, club beats, rollicking piano melodies, and vocals that sound awfully similar to the android on Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier.” For a world pockmarked with wars, vicious diseases, and a global financial crisis, the frequently ominous soundscapes of this British duo seem all too relevant and applicable to modern life. When you wrap your brain around that, the record’s power to emotionally shatter you becomes evident.
Certainly, a bit of imagination is going to help you digest this record more easily. The plotline runs like this: the brothers Farthing (going by their aliases Operatives A and B) discover a man-made causeway that extends half a mile into the foggy waters of the English Channel. Due to the incredibly dense air though, few people have taken note of this unassuming structure jutting out into the sea (except of course, the makers of this album). When A and B gain access to the causeway on an uncharacteristically fog-free day, they find at its highest point a deserted house (see the album cover for a spooky illustration). They spend two days there, documenting the sights, sounds, and atmospheres, and come away with 11 tracks of melancholic electronica.
Apparently, the house also had a vocoder in it, which the brothers use gratuitously throughout the album’s running time. In most cases, the heavily processed voices combine the weary whisper of Tool’s Maynard James Keenan with the guttural singsong of KMFDM’s En Esch (“The Black Cramp” is one such track). Take away these indecipherable cyborg vocals, and there is nary a weak link to be found on The House On The Causeway.
The album is bookended by “(frontplate)” and “(endplate),” two nearly identical tracks of ambient droning. Both songs also feature a grating high-pitched frequency that comes off as either a dog whistle or a raging case of tinnitus. One can only assume this to be the sound of the fog that enshrouds the causeway; according to the Operatives, there is actually a detectable pitch when the fog is at its thickest. Were it not for the incessant ringing, both of these tunes would be right at home on any Stars Of The Lid album.
Elsewhere on the album, the duo indulges their flair for finding the perfect balance between brooding post rock and electronic-tinged folk. On “Bad Slate,” we find Kid A-era vocals mingling with reverb drenched guitar leads, Bjork-esque drumbeats, and subterrestrial synth bass. The only vocal fragment to be understood is a robotic voice inquiring, “How do you sleep?” “Mirrors At Night” is a standout track in which a gorgeously picked acoustic guitar begins to envelope itself, creating cascading layers of minimalist bliss. It’s one of the happiest moments on the whole record, despite the eerie whispers and dissonant piano pulses in the background. “Vaulted” finds Reigns channeling a little bit of Moby. The song features cascading waves of static that sound just like the ocean, as well as despondent piano and guitar inflections that seem soaked with nostalgic longing.
“Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen,” with its weeping piano part, seems like it would fit nicely on the soundtrack of any Thomas Newman-scored film. “Crex, Crex, Crex” seems to most closely resemble the trip-hop perfection of Portishead, as hissy electronics and foreboding strings brush alongside one another. And yet despite all of these connections to more recognizable talent, Reigns still manage to sound like no one other than themselves.
The concept may be far-fetched, but if you are willing to suspend your disbelief, The House On The Causeway should be one of the best electronic-driven releases of the year. However, as a cautionary conclusion, I do recommend you follow the advice of the band’s promoter: “Please do not drive, exercise, or operate heavy machinery after listening.”"
The Wire March 2009 (The House On The Causeway)
"Tim and Roo Farthing are brothers who style themselves Operatives A and B, and who specialise in the lavish mystique constructed around each of their releases. They claimed their first album, 2005's We Lowered A Microphone Into The Ground, was recorded down a botomless hole in Somerset, while the following year's Styne Vallis purported to consist of field recordings from a submerged abandoned village. On The House On The Causeway,they meticulously detail the supernatural phenomena encountered during a weekend spent in a haunted house. Or at least they pretend to.
By creating such outlandish narratives, the British duo manage to both resurrect the idea of the album as an all-encompassing event and subvert the usual marketing of music, the relentless focus on the personalities behind the sounds. Plus, in addition to being extremely good at spinning a creepy yarn - MR James would surely be impressed - their music is quite excellent.
The album's 11 songs mostly centre around repeating piano motifs, superfcially similar to Steve Reich's small ensemble pieces but with the impassive regularity replaced by a haunted sense of dislocation and sorrow. The effect of such deeply affecting music allied to conceptual and lyrical content that is almost absurdly dark, hinting at terrible events and states of appalling mental anguish, is beguiling and not a little bizarre. At various times it's difficult to know whether to laugh out loud, break down at the unbearable poignancy of it all, or go and check all the rooms in the house armed with a carving knife.
"
Keith Moline
Autothrall (http://autothrall.blogspot.com) (The House On The Causeway)
"The charm of Reigns comes in the two brothers' ability to spin shifting worlds out of deceivingly simple loops; a genesis tied together by a brilliant attention to detail. Minimal and pleasant, the stories they offer are nevertheless somber glimpses at unknown and almost forgotten moments in time, from the madness-imbibing legend We Lowered A Microphone Into The Ground to the lost lives of Styne Vallis. This time around, Operatives A and B have found an abandoned house, lost to the mists on the far end of an English Channel causeway, in which to record a new journey.
Suitably, The House On The Causeway is a darker expedition than we've seen from these blokes before. Unlike the bright exploration of Styne Vallis' drowned wonders, Reigns have brought us the hushed hallways and still compartments of a long-empty home and its perfectly preserved memories. A piano trembles and chimes from downstairs as the Operatives go from diary to portrait, looking glasses that provide a surreal glimpse into unfamiliar lives. The House On The Causeway is a wholly undisturbed experience that shows the brothers' mastery of thematic delivery - moments like "Bad Slate" and "Mab Crease" recount tales of the unknowingly doomed through stirringly accompanied narration, while instrumental numbers serve as a reminder that these lives have long since passed. The drums are soft and deep, blending in with bright piano and guitar movements, wistful atmospheres, and skittering samples that tell as much about muffled emptiness as they do about meaning. Each song blends seamlessly with the next while remaining completely unique, never drawing the listener outside the fog-lost rooms on the causeway.
Evocative, thoughtful, and serious, The House On The Causeway is a fantastic new story from Reigns that shows a further maturation in their sound. Add to that the morose mood of the subject matter that touches me in all the right spots, and I have a nigh-on perfect album in my hands.
Verdict: Epic Win (9.5/10)"
Whatever Unicorn
CMU Music network - 04 February 2009 (The House On The Causeway)
"REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEW: Reigns - The House On The Causeway (Monotreme Records)
'The House On The Causeway' is electronic musicians Reigns' third studio LP, and is the musical equivalent of a snowstorm in northern Russia. At times violent and at others frigidly cold and still, 'Causeway' is, ultimately, a beautiful scope of experimental electronic-folk seen through a broken kaleidoscope of monotone colour. Album opener '(Frontplane)' sets the record's landscape perfectly - echoing pianos, heavy, low synths and an uncanny sense of dread and trepidation. There are rare - and not entirely unwelcome - rays of sunshine though in tracks like 'Mirrors At Night' and the haunted but dazzling 'Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen'. Like the (criminally) underrated Knife album 'Silent Shout', 'The House On The Causeway' is dark and narrative-esque, themed throughout with stories about winter, classical industrial landscapes and, of course, that haunted house on the causeway. If M83 makes the kind of electronic music that uplifts you to a place that is at once bright and exhilarating, Reigns pulls you down into the gutters and the marshy earth, but despite that, is as equally exquisite and surreal. TW
"
Canned Applause Dec 18 2008 (The House On The Causeway)
"Famous playwright and world-renowned brainbox George Bernard Shaw once wrote: “If you can’t get rid of the skeletons in your closet, you’d better teach them how to dance” - Reigns were clearly paying attention. Like Mogwai having a nervous breakdown in a haunted house, Wessex-based brothers Tim and Roo Farthing craft surreal and epic soundscapes that revel in the curio of their coastal eccentricity. From the epic melancholia of ‘Bad Slate’ to the spooky brilliance of ’Mirrors At Night’ and ’Vaulted’, Reigns are befuddling brilliant; the only real criticism with ‘The House On The Causeway’ is that it arrived too late for Halloween.
Singing like they have collectively trapped their balls in a car door, these brothers Grimm fashion a compellingly aeriform racket that is far more heartfelt and considered than the majority of today’s numbing indie flotsam. Ghostly ambience, distorted vocals and eerie electronics segue beautifully into instrumental breaks of folky melodica and chilling stabs of piano, the whole package unfurling with an ethereal grandeur that charms and unsettles in equal measure. Indeed, Reigns’ pastoral prog is more than a little creepy, most of it sounding like it was tailormade to soundtrack Fred West’s inner monologue during his quieter moments of introspection, although repeat listens reveal that it is well worth more than a perfunctory glance. Just remember to check the wardrobe for monsters before you push ‘Play’. "