Cahill/Costello II is a set of widescreen tracks, pulsating with sound and atmosphere. Following 2021’s Offworld, the Glaswegian duo of Kevin Cahill and Graham Costello, guitarist and drummer respectively, have developed a close musical affinity. Their new album was created by writing and improvising together, and recording the results live. The method might suggest an unpolished record, but that’s far from the case.
Cahill’s guitar is layered, with melodic phrases floating along a tide of melancholy drone. Meanwhile, Costello’s drumming sits at the front of the mix, rapping out polyrhthyms that are as expressive as anything else in the music. The results are an intriguing and very listenable combination of ideas and styles. The beats have a drum and bass flavour, full of shifting patterns and flickering backbeats. Cahill’s guitar plays repeated figures, which have something of the Ghost Box about them at times, for example on ‘JNGL’, where the muffled, bell-like minor melody loops are reminiscent of the strangest reaches of vintage library music.
There is nothing twee about the album, though. Any hint of prettiness is constantly undercut, on long tracks, several more than ten minutes long, which bring out an overwhelming eerieness, and a sense of endless space and time. The album moves at a slow, confident, deliberate pace that evokes the movement of continental shelves, the cleaving of valleys, and the endless formation of ice sheets. The absence of any human voice opens up space that feels wide, awesome and natural. But the music surprises, too. ‘I Have Seen the Lions on the Beach’ jumps like stuck vinyl, a preserved record of a lost past, but segues into percussion that crosses early computer game effects with popping bubble-wrap. ‘Lachryma’ is washed with wave after wave of static, a track as sad as its title implies, but complex and beautiful too. ‘Sun Beat’, by contrast, is troubled but upbeat, super-confident in its simplicity. ‘Sensemann’ has a naggingly simple guitar riff over a rolling storm of taps, roars and booms that are alluring and unsettling.
Cahill and Costello are definitely onto something with their method of working, and they have an enviable talent for expressing themselves, together. Improvising such a complete and consistent album, full of texture and fluctuating mood, is an achievement. Cahill/Costello II is a serious set of songs that are also highly enjoyable – a pleasure for people .
