Listening to Gareth Dickson’s album “Orwell Court” one of the thoughts passing your mind is, that hopefully, it's not the court of George Orwell. You see, Dickson is another player in musical subtlety who relies on church-like resonance and hushed vocals that are almost ghostlike, who even decides to end this album with his version of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”.
But don’t worry, Dickson is not judging anybody. It seems he is just trying to straddle that vaporized, atmospheric border where beautiful and frightening collide. And on this, his third album. he is able to sit firmly on the fence.
No wonder Scotsman Dickson, a regular member of Vashti Bunyan’s band, another excellent purveyor in atmospherics, records for the ambient label 12K. His vocals, guitar-playing, and arrangements fit there perfectly. And again, Gareth Dickson is yet another artist who proves that it is usually simplicity that produces the most stunning music.
To be able to do so you have to have the intuition and knowledge to place each sparse element exactly where it belongs. Dickson manages to do so - he even introduces silence itself and in the aptly titled opening track “Two Halfs”, telling us exactly what he is trying to portray here.
Such play with light and shade, often with just simple elements as voice, guitar and some reverberation can be tricky, dangerous and often disastrous. Dickson escapes all the possible traps and his cover of “Atmosphere”, probably quite a big trap itself, is proof enough since it presents in perfect light/shade the musical vision he wanted to portray here.To put it briefly, with “Orwell Court” Gareth Dickson came up with a ghostly good album. All you have to do is listen and decide when his ghosts are friendly and when you have to be afraid of them.
