As Robert Burns wrote many a year ago, “The best laid schemes of mice and men. Go often awry”, though they do not always, as he posited, “leave us nothing but grief and pain”. Certainly, the 2011 plan of Sam Ray (Ricky Eat Acid) and Malcolm Lacey (Arrange) to record an album together not coming to pass is disappointing, but that disappointment is tempered immeasurably by the duo’s newly released collaborative EP, Sketches.
During the recording process, technology failed and they had to put the project on hold indefinitely. Luckily for us, four tracks had been completed and a year later the pair have decided to release them separately rather than hold them for an album that may never materialise. Luckily for us as these four tracks of ambient melancholy are simply breathtaking.
The duo shared instrumentation and mixing with Sam taking responsibility for the majority of the production and this has no doubt helped give it such coherence and completeness. Often collaborations can feel slightly disjointed, that the balance is off, not on Sketches. It is so complete, so coherent, that you would swear they had been making music together in this form for eternity, it goes without saying that we hope they make more.
Lacey’s vocals have always had an otherworldly quality to them and here they rest atop each track like low-lying haze across the countryside early one autumn morning. Combined with the often glacial synths and percussion that somehow manages to be both fragile and sharp at once, the result is an EP that is consistently beautiful, haunting at times, but always beautiful. If you ever needed an antidote to the hustle and bustle of everyday life, this is it. It’s ‘close your eyes and let the sounds take you places’ music. Music you don’t just listen to but experience, let it float around you like a dream and carry you off into your imagination, you may never want to come back.
Sketches is out now on a name your own price deal from the bandcamp pages of both Arrange and Ricky Eat Acid
Alphabet Bands 
beautiful swirly track.