Leisure & Technology by Torn Sail

Don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with TORN SAIL, or even the name HUW COSTIN. You’re not the only one, more’s the pity, though he’s been quietly releasing records now for almost two full decades in a variety of guises, not to mention as a featured artist. Nonetheless, COSTIN – who grew up in Cardiff, only to flee to Leicestershire upon his parents’ divorce, before eventually settling in Nottingham – numbers among his fans and collaborators Mark Lanegan (who guested on TORN SAIL’s 2017 debut album, This Short Sweet Life), veteran English singer-songwriter Michael Chapman (who appears on LEISURE & TECHNOLOGY’s ‘Green Nature’), cult downtempo act Smith & Mudd (for whom COSTIN has provided vocals a number of times), and Richard Warren aka Echoboy (from whose aborted The Cold Light Of Day project, formed to represent Soulsavers’ live incarnation, COSTIN constructed Torn Sail). LEISURE & TECHNOLOGY itself, meanwhile, features contributions from Doggen Foster, who plays with Spiritualized and Julian Cope, and Jonny Aitken, drummer on Spiritualized’s Amazing Grace. People have been listening, in other words, even if you haven’t. Yet.

You may – especially upon hearing their music – wonder how TORN SAIL and COSTIN have, until now, passed you by. Another look at that roll call of names will answer the question: COSTIN is, as one label with whom he briefly worked put it, “a marketing nightmare”. His output – whether leading local rock faves Earth The Californian Love Dream in the early 2000s or letting his voice soar on Popsneon’s recent ‘This Town Forever’, and that’s not to overlook his solo romantic rollercoaster, Regrets, along the way – has always been as capricious as the broad musical nature his list of fans suggests. Furthermore, LEISURE & TECHNOLOGY finds him at his most daring. Its sprawling nature represents a celebration of the very freedom that comes with independence – over the years, COSTIN has released much of his work himself – and though it’s arguably that very independence which has left him short of the budgets required for publicists and marketing campaigns, it’s also allowed him to make bold, singular, extravagant records of rare, uncompromised passion. Pink Floyd, The Blue Nile, Robert Wyatt, Massive Attack, O.Rang, David Axelrod: you’ll hear all of them at some point or other, but rarely for long. Each of his records swerves from the beaten track – though COSTIN always eyes his destination – and its subtle surprises still startle after repeated listens. LEISURE & TECHNOLOGY simply does this better than ever.

COSTIN’s voice, as always, is the star. Luxurious and lugubrious, eloquent and elegiac, it’s instantly recognisable, whether tracing out intertwining melodies on the skeletal opener, ‘Orange Light / Blue Fog’ – sparked by a series of losses, not least his partner’s father, who can be heard playing with his grandchildren in the song’s background – or candidly sharing the mundane details of a day that earns the closing tune, in all its Lennon-like simplicity, its title, ‘A Beautiful Life’. In between are six further songs of sweeping majesty, over which the shadow of death also hangs heavy. The extraordinary ‘Green Nature’, its lyrics written over a decade ago, pairs COSTIN with Michael Chapman, whose rough, vulnerable vocal encapsulates its themes of mortality and perfectly matches its spacious, jazzy qualities, while on the spacious, almost eight-minute-long ‘Windowless’, COSTIN seeks escape in music, his chiming guitars underpinned by a glorious, rolling bassline. “When I hear that song,” he admits, “I see ‘hospital green’ - all my songs have a colour – and the lights of the Intensive Care unit. I associate it with stolen commutes to Leicester General Hospital, where my stepfather was looked after until he was moved to a hospice, then died of bowel cancer.”

On the deceptively optimistic ‘Sadness All Over’, moreover, even youth can only remind COSTIN of his own decline – “Our children/ Now they are much older/ I feel it on my shoulder/ The clean white hand of death” – as he examines a weakened relationship, acknowledging “you’re free to leave at any time”. On the translucent, atmospheric ‘Bible’, though, he hands songwriting and chief vocal duties to The Listeners’ Emma Thorpe (who also appeared on This Short Sweet Life), and, amid wraithlike dub reminiscent of Bowery Electric’s Beat, her sweet voice again shares the spotlight with COSTIN’s masked vocals on ‘Scared Of My Heart’, in which life itself is entirely terrifying: “I’m scared of the start/ I’m scared of the end”.

COSTIN insists, of course, that he’s not quite the doom-monger he appears – “It’s just a bit of fun,” he laughs wryly, “I'm not a morbid person!” – but he even lost his studio during the recording process. “I had to tie a lot of loose ends up to finish the record,” he remembers. “I became friendly with Simon White, a successful DJ and underground producer with DIY and Neon Heights, a real punk and a disco head. He really helped me bring it together, and was a constantly positive, shining light who helped make the dark music an enjoyable experience. The man has infinite patience.”

Arguably the record’s highlight – if for its audacity as much as anything – is the drawn-out, psychedelic ‘Blood Drain Away’. Featuring the gritty voice of local poet Dean Geary, it’s an utterly unique drama, part Talk Talk, part Moody Blues, part early Verve, with Costin’s eerie incantations – including “Witch’s bottle/ Release the spell/ Spirit dissolve” – seemingly calling from another realm. Originally written around the time of ‘Windowless’, its first draft related in part to similar experiences, COSTIN explains, “but it became part of a greater collage, taking in layers of history across one of my favourite landscapes, with Dean’s words based on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series.”

The song epitomises COSTIN’s urge to answer to nothing but the music and to let his instincts drive him, so much so that Chapman’s vocal for ‘Green Nature’ was first recorded for another song. In fact, he’s still making sense of what he’s done on this new album. “I'm not sure I like it,” he chuckles. “I love it, but it's a strange beast I've set free. I'm struggling to come to terms with it. I'm just not interested in making the same record over and over.” LEISURE & TECHNOLOGY, therefore, is as good a place as any to begin familiarising yourself with HUW COSTIN and, specifically, TORN SAIL. Heady and cerebral, rousing and reassuring, sometimes grief-stricken yet somehow never morbid, it presents the ideal opportunity to experience a songwriter’s songwriter test himself as never before. As COSTIN concludes on ‘A Beautiful Life’, “You’ll see what I mean/ Eventually…”

Torn Sail make bold, singular, extravagant records of rare, uncompromised passion. Each of his records swerves from the beaten track – though COSTIN always eyes his destination – and its subtle surprises still startle after repeated listens. LEISURE & TECHNOLOGY simply does this better than ever.

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