Every year London label wiaiwya (where it’s at is where you are) asks seven acts to each record a 77-minute track/album to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The project is called #sevenat77 and experimental post rock band firestations are the latest actto take part. They have also contributed a 77-second and 7-minute version of their work for you to immerse yourself in.
Written in two socially distanced home studios as ‘a response to the strange and shifting experience of the coronavirus lockdown’, it opens with bursts of birdsong and nature as the subtle electronic sounds and glitch-filled drums blend seamlessly in a poignant and emotional way that reminded us of everyone from Tall Ships to Max Richter and Nordic Giants. The floaty vocals just add to its pull and power – especially when they talk about promises floating away through a mental haze and how ‘I hear you calling out from your old place like a dream I had in the summer. Constant change’.
The accompanying 16mm film featured in the video by Laura Copsey was buried in Epping Forest at the beginning of the lockdown before being dug up recently, with the intention of capturing physical traces of time – an abstract history created by nature.