One of the most astonishing recollections I ever heard from those that fought in the Second World War was from a spitfire pilot. He recounted how during the impossibly hot summer of 1940 - when The Battle of Britain ended Hitler’s attempted invasion of our country - he could find himself during the morning in the midst of a dog-fight several hundred feet above the English countryside and then by the afternoon be lying out in a farmer’s field enjoying the company of a young lady, looking up at the same blue sky that only a few hours before had been his aerial battleground.
July Skies’ ‘The English Cold’ contains music that effortlessly and convincingly evokes the borrowed memories of such spitfire pilots and also reminds us of lost airmen, of villagers and farmers witnessing a war, of country lanes and passing seasons and ultimately of an era that with each passing year loses more of its generation for whom the Second World War was experience rather than history.
The song titles are like chapter headings or words written on the back of old photographs: ‘Farmers and Villagers Living Within The Shadow of Aerodromes, ‘Death Was Where Your Sky Was’, ‘They Played In The Harvest Fields At Dusk’. Most tracks are instrumental, dripping with melancholy but never depressing with the ghostly voice of Antony Harding, who is July Skies, occasionally streaming into the dream-world of the ambient music he creates. The Durutti Column and the effects-driven guitar work of Robin Guthrie are strong influences but there’s also some of David Sylvian’s instrumental passages from ‘Gone To Earth’, Radiohead’s quieter moments, Daniel Lanois and more recently The Montgolfier Brothers.
For a predominantly instrumental album it is the coherent lyricism that sets it apart from most ambient works. The music succeeds brilliantly in shaping the images for the mind’s eye that tell the visually hazy stories of a bygone age when wars were faught for the right reasons and of a countryside where the dead still roam. The stories are all tinged with an air of ethereal reflection and regret that range from the tragic to the intimate but never detract from nor diminish the album’s wider themes of loss and remembrance.
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As importantly as stirring the imagination and sustaining a musical narrative, ‘The English Cold’ also reaches deep into the listener's heart by capturing such a potent and sensual feeling of loss, not only of life but of a way of life, that it is impossible to be unmoved. For better or worse this is an England that no longer exists but July Skies succeeds in convincing the listener that it is an England that should not be forgotten.
There are many highlights. ‘East Anglian Skies’ is simultaneously beautiful and menacing as it paints the stunning aerial backdrop against which twisting planes scream and scorch through the air, speeding metal and wood suddenly explode into earthbound comets and brave young men confront fear and death within the clouds. 'They Played In the Harvest Fields At Dusk' is a pastoral and soothing lullaby that captures the innocence of the age despite the horror above ground. 'Lost Airmen' is the voice of ghosts: sad, lamenting but strangely hopeful.
'The English Cold' is a unique and priceless minor masterpiece that reinvigorates the ambient genre, makes reflective music seem vital and urgent and in its own small but remarkable and poignant way quietly urges listeners to be thankful for the sacrifices of others and for the freedoms they enjoy today.
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