Road to Rosslyn by Christopher Chaplin

For fans of Tony Conrad, Ben Vida, Carlos Niño, no wave, and gothic cathedrals, Road to Rosslyn by Christopher Chaplin guides us on a medieval pilgrimage through the United Kingdom, capturing the divine entity which animates the gothic style by dedicating each track to a specific iconic church. Gothic cathedrals exhibit a peculiar relationship with light which gets mirrored in the sounds of this album, as both selectively allow dazzling displays of sublime beauty interspersed with an encroaching intimidation due to the space’s sheer vastness. A majority of the time given Europe’s generally overcast weather and seasonal swings in sunlight, these cathedrals bathe in a dull gray glow, represented here through a minimal roar of strings, synths, samples, and vocals, all buzzing with the suggestion of salvation while remaining in the aesthetic depths. However, under those rare ideal circumstances, sunlight bursts directly through the windows, sending our eyes, our spirits, our entire beings soaring upwards, a sensation recreated here with a rare moment of lock-step, euphoric harmonic release.