It's counter intuitive perhaps to react to the increasing noise of the world, not by adding to it, but by seeking quiet. Or something close to it. Arrival's debut EP does just that - assembling immersive aural environments and delicately detailed backdrops - setting the scene for the perfectly pitched deeply melancholic meditations of Britain's least known and most valuable guitarist, Kevin McCormick. Gordon Milson and Mark Rayner as Arrival, and Kevin too, are all proud Stockport denizens. They're central to something gently stirring in the town They're calling it (using the district postcode) SKambient. It's a youthful music scene sprouting from the cracks between the cobbles of a neglected old town area, built around the meandering Underbanks. Here outliers like the bespoke hifi gaff, Odioba and Bruk are venues open to DJs and listeners looking for something deeper and less simplistically confrontational than your regular shouty Manc racket, R. Kid. It's organic electronic, and (mindful of the Derbyshire hills to be seen peeping through the gaps throughout the town) pastoral too. Now the mills and workshops have fallen silent, never to be rebooted, these neglected spaces have been subdivided at affordable (for now) rents, allowing young sonic creatives to explore new environmental responses to a post, post-industrial landscape. It's not unexpected. This is the town where the first (and perhaps greatest) ambient pop song in 10cc's "I'm Not In Love" was recorded in 1975 - at the legendary Strawberry Studios. Kevin McCormick - with a whole series of rightly revered, self-defining records to his name - copies no one. But there are definite echoes in his approach. Consider the unquestionable genius of Vini Reilly. His eternally stunning Return of The Durutti Column was mixed in that same studio. Alongside Arrival and their distinctly calming compositions, the former mills and converted spaces are full of laptops and instruments shared by a like-minded extended community in Jack Lever/Open Tapes, Arcade, Joe Synkro, Bop, Elsewhere and Thought Leadership. It's crass indeed to suggest all these things sound alike, but there's a definite thread, a certain sensibility. Arrival have already received significant support from characteristically curious backroom Balearic selectors and collectors. It's music made for the joy of it and released here by the uniquely open-minded DJ, and scene stalwart, Jason Boardman's Before I Die imprint.
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