A piece of trivia about me, for those who have never seen me in person, is that I have a tattoo on my arm of the cover of SotL’s The Ballasted Orchestra. It was my second (tat-two) actually, inked back in 2019 and probably the one that gets the most questions in general conversation. For obvious reasons of course, considering that at first glance it looks like a hurried scribble.

Most people don’t dig much further than “what is it” and “what is it supposed to be”, though sometimes I do get “why did you get it?”, and the honest answer is:  I just love the album and I love the design, though it does occasionally seem a bit mad to have had this done to myself.

There’s always been something that’s attracted me to the artwork, something in its frenzied ballpoint strokes and impressionistic quality that make it look part building, part portal, part sepulchral object. Some have likened it to a birdcage, others like the space at Lourdes where Mary appeared to Bernadette; I’m sure the psychoanalysts would have a field day with peoples’ interpretations. I’ve always seen it as a doorway though, some shrouded arch painted in gold that hints at something – partially, incompletely, hurriedly – beyond.

I feel this is important because I seem to have a connection with entrances. Looking back at some of my recent photographic work I’ve noticed a subtle tendency towards doors, especially those with hidden interiors or inaccessible sides, entry by invite only. I suspect there’s a longer term project there, but I’ve noticed them creeping in, noticed it in the same way that TBO makes me feel like I’m staring into (through) something, still searching for answers it’ll never yield through its brief aperture.

Often I feel that time pauses when I play this record, a decade-plus of listening to it, turning the handle to peek inside. What is there to say at this point? That it feels like the caught snatches of some whispers slipped round the edges of a doorframe? That it could be the sound made as an anvil overcast day breaks to spill its lost light? Or that it could remind me of the mundane hum of pylons in the damp weather fizzing their energies off into space?

There’s a depth and richness to this record that is as timeless today as it was when I first heard it all those years ago. The opening chords of “Central Texas” seem to reverberate from some chasm, an unplaceable mood rising from the depths. As it transitions into iconic “Sun Drugs” there’s a moment where it just shifts, a lightness pulled through like Ariadne’s string to float along its edge towards hope. It wants to go, to keep going, but the veil presides over the miasmic interiors of interstitial “Down II” and flattened “Taphead”, sinking ever deeper, pulling ever further away.

To a point this sullen force feels insurmountable: I still feel the surging yearning of tormented “Fucked Up (3:57am)”, albeit with a different faculty to when I was younger. Its strained oscillations ring with overthought energies, transforming into the rich heaving bosom of lady night as it rolls off into smothering, uneasy airs.

But change is subtle and inexorable, arrival inevitable. “Music For Twin Peaks Episode #30 Part #1” comes to move the needle, or does it represent the needle has moved? It shifts uneasily sometimes, but lightly, delicately, sublimating the rime that’s formed over us in restless sleep as thought and worry evaporate away.

And then there’s “The Artificial Pine Arch Song”. A thing of such incalculable beauty it’s hard to envisage a more perfect moment in the whole of Drone’s history. A glow, an 18 minute glow that comes from somewhere else, like the gentle transformations of the phosphenes that dance in your vision behind closed eyes. Like the delicate interior light from the other room that gently reminds you of someone else’s nearness. The full moon pouring its silvery radiances to banish a small slice of darkness to the corner. So it goes on, achingly beautiful and yet just out of physical reach.

Sometimes people say they wish they could go back in time, unhear something so they can listen to it again for the first time. I don’t. I simply wish to be able to continue to listen to The Ballasted Orchestra, to continue to grow with it, know it more deeply. Perhaps one day I’ll set foot across the threshold, if it’ll let me. In the meantime I’ll carry it with me as an open invitation.

My original piece, written way back in the olden times2014, is still live and can still be read here.