White Noise creating storylines

Lawrence English’s newest album The Rest is My Ghost is a combination of white noise, repetitive synth patterns and sinister deep undertones that keep you locked in throughout the album. It creates an eerie but hopeful feeling as you progress through each song. Listening to the album in one sitting feels extremely unpredictable, whether shuffling the tracks or keeping them in order. The instrumentals create a story while keeping each rhythm and synth pattern original and unexpected. The shifts in pitch and vibration from song to song build curiosity and allow the audience to interpret their own version of the intended message.
English’s creativity with this album comes from his ability to describe a story while using minimal instrumental tools to set the scene, mainly white noise and synth notes. To paint the full picture of each song, there are hints of non-instrumental noises like bells, jingle bells, radars and shifts between high and low pitches. The non-instrumental noises can be heard as the dialogue, while the instrumental parts create the environment. The atmosphere English creates lets the listener form their own storyline or vision because of the diverse clamor that follows you through each song.
What makes this album eerie yet hopeful can be heard clearly in “Eclosion,” where a hollow, gloomy foundation is contrasted by soft chimes and bells. The bells bring a sense of positivity and hope while almost being drowned out by white noise. The angelic chimes and high-pitched ringing create the feeling of a light at the end of the tunnel.
“GhostType,” the last song, brings back the same recognizable ringing and bells within similarly eerie surroundings. The song begins with an uncomfortable, stretched-out deep violin sound that continues until the atmosphere eventually shifts into an indescribable feeling of uncertainty.
What contrasts the two tracks is the buildup to their climaxes. Each gives the listener a battle between emotions of discomfort and confidence. “Eclosion” introduces you to the album, giving you a taste of what you’re entering into. It brings uncertainty and distress through its painfully quiet, washed-out white noise and added instrumentals. By “GhostType,” the listener has a better understanding of the atmosphere English is creating through its pitched ringing and smaller details of bells, radars and choir-like sounds.
While this creativity produces complex emotions and thoughts throughout the listening experience, there are so few recognizable instruments that it can sometimes become difficult to give each song its own identity. There isn’t much to contrast between the majority of the tracks unless you interpret the meaning of each song differently. That similarity can make parts of the album blend, even if that also contributes to the larger atmosphere English is building.
Lawrence English has delivered an album that not only introduces creativity through minimal instrumentation and everyday background sounds, but creates a story by using those sounds to describe emotions. That is what becomes thrilling about instrumental and minimally melodic music: you can create your own story. You’re allowed to feel the way you feel with each song, explain it, think about it or simply write down whatever comes to mind. It’s the kind of music that can leave you with annotations filling up Post-it notes.
That freedom of interpretation is ultimately what The Rest is My Ghost gives its listener—the freedom and liberation that music can bring.