Between 1938 and 1998, the state-owned Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico (FNM) ran from coat to coast across Mexico, connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic by means of a continuous railroad. In 1997, passenger services ceased, and it was subsequently privatised and split over four main systems. In the last months of this historic railway’s life as a single entity, Chris Watson spent an entire month in the company of staff and passengers with a film crew working on the BBC TV series ‘Great Railway Journeys’. In his capacity of sound recordist, he captured recordings from across the country. This album, the title of which translates as ‘The Ghost Train’ is made using some of those recordings.
It’s fair to describe this as a concept album, in that it has a clear central theme that runs through all ten tracks, and it’s also an ambient album in the truest sense, the recordings made on location and capturing the sounds of the environment, the background and the foreground.
|
The listener is taken on a very real journey, with the natural rhythms of the wheels on the tracks, running over the points, providing an axis of something solid around which other sounds emerge; voices at stations, announcements, the thunder of passing trains, the silence and the sounds of insects and other creatures at night.
At times soothing and at times, in the midst of the hustle and bustle, it’s exciting. What is most affecting is the fact that this is now a historical document, a capsule that records a journey that will never again take place. It’s evocative and strangely moving. All aboard!
Chris Watson Online
|
