Mark Harris: "In Slow Motion She Falls"

n5MD’s emotional experiments in music continue with Mark Harris, a UK sound designer who’s clearly been bottling a lot of emotions of his own. They flow out like a wave on An Idea of North/Learning to Walk, the ambient album he recorded last winter when Britain ground to a standstill (the cause: 20cm of snow). The men from Oakland obviously heard his distress call and decided to press it to digipak. They probably also taught him how to lay grit, and how, instead of reading the ice survival tips in the Sun, he should go out, clear his head, and slide down a hill with some friends.

Though each of An Idea‘s five tracks is gorgeous and enveloping (and conjoined, and rarely less than six minutes), it’s “In Slow Motion She Falls” which has the most grab. Featuring the same sun-washed synths that Cliff Martinez used in the Drive score, and some carefully recorded birds and greenery, it’s the last of the album’s brighter tracks before Harris dips you into the dark. His idea of a piece of music to capture “being within a landscape” is fully realised, and sounds precisely like what should play if you walk into a field of bluebells. There’s a shadow of bass but the focus here is on opening up, lights swirling, glacial keyboards ringing out. Ideal, as the title says, for falling in slow motion, or just pulling the curtains and falling asleep.