In London’s Docklands there lies now derelict flour mills of the 20th century – The Millennium Mills. These mills form the backdrop, field recording wise, of this wonderfully spacious new album by Aino Tytti – Millennium Mills.

Given access to the mills by the Greater London Authority, Tytti set up a selection of microphones and various amplifiers within to capture not only recordings of the decaying buildings but also to record tones and beautiful operatic voices played directly into the halls. Re-recorded in a way that brings them very much within reach. In fact, there are points within this album where the distance between you and the locations of its recordings just evaporate, you are transported directly into the dusty buildings with nothing but the rain lashing against their exterior for company. That same rain washing away the mills original purpose to create vast halls that now house these ghostly operas.

Beautifully recorded and balanced, everything is allowed its own space to breath. Nothing feels rushed or cluttered. Millennium Mills tells a story or the years between the mills being used to process flour and the final breeze that cleared out the last remaining piece of dust.

The album comes packaged with a 17 page PDF containing information about the recording process along with photos of the area – the new encroaching on the old. Some bits of which are steadfastly refusing to move, not giving an inch, as if forcing the people in the ugly new houses to remember what went before.

GRAB

–
Aino Tytti – Observations from the nightwatch hut, late November
Aino Tytti – These halls which used to breathe and sing
Aino Tytti – England’s last lies ruined
Aino Tytti – Silo D
Aino Tytti – Waxing gibbous shines on the black king’s wharf (for Chrissie)
Aino Tytti – First light, crepuscular loculus
Aino Tytti – All that which was once lost
Aino Tytti – A requiem for Silvertown