William Doyle - Lightnesses I & II

Lightnesses is a sound experiment that pays tribute to the original ideas of ‘ambient music’, while nudging our expectations of the form.

The name is inspired by the soft sunlight that falls on the wall of Doyle’s whitewash, new-build walls, oddly beautiful in such domestic circumstances; especially after an afternoon drinking in Wetherspoons. Soon, Doyle was “obsessed with how light would move through my bedroom, reflecting off of my blinds and off of other windows outside, bouncing from car windshields in the car park down below, slowly changing its position over time both daily and seasonally.” Collected on Doyle’s Instagram feed as #lightnesses, this release provides a fully realised accompaniment.

Throughout opener ‘Aisles of White’, clusters of delicate granular piano keys rise and fall over a subtle but potent drone. Eventually, a compelling pattern of quiet tension emerges, followed by microdoses of release, each element echoing into another seamlessly. Meanwhile, ‘Number of Harmony’ bathes the listener in stunning organ-led textures, adding greater sense of movement - an unexpected surprise in the initially unpredictable recording process - and perhaps a more pronounced sense of psychedelia. Even in such limited context, bound by repetition, Doyle conjures a unique feeling of melancholy, catharsis or even just somnolence.

Inspired by artists such as Tim Hecker and Brian Eno, Doyle is a self-confessed student of ‘ambient’ music in it’s purest, occasionally passive form.