Lucy Gooch’s music is a beautiful ethereal fog; like hearing a subliminal echo of Kate Bush on a fading tape loop, masked by an internal wall of sound that vibrates with the hum of everyday life. The ‘Rain’s Break’ EP is her first release for Fire, following the much-touted ‘Rushing’ EP. Inspired by the early technicolour films of Powell and Pressburger, Lucy uses synthesisers and vocal layering to concentrate elements of each film’s score and narrative into songs which move through different moods of yearning and renewal. So, it is amidst 1940’s austerity that these films were an escape, an over-rich backdrop of possibilities. A snatched piece of dialogue, the film’s score, the crackle of uncertainty all succumbs to the layered ambience of Lucy’s music as she traces moods of yearning and renewal on ‘Rain’s Break’ EP. Originally from Norfolk, Lucy studied Fine Art and later moved to Bristol to join the emerging ambient scene there -gradually developing her writing and finally releasing her debut ‘Rushing’ EP in early 2020. Over the past year, she’s dipped into a wealth of long gone celluloid as the basis for a filmic journey, a five song EP that relives formative movies in her unique take on ecclesiastical pop. This is music that takes you places, shifts focus, paints large canvases.

Lucy Gooch’s ‘Rain’s Break EP’ is aptly named because it really does feel like a break from dreary weather, or as has been the case for me when listening recently: a break from the tiring pandemic. It contains the eerie threats of more rain – or pandemic – yet to come. But the dreamscape ambience gives your brain a rest from it all. Although the EP is short, the abstract experiments with plunging synths and layered choral vocals take you to new cinematic lands that you can escape to for the rest of the day after listening. For me, this is entirely necessary listening at the minute. Any doctor should prescribe it. Especially if you’re a fan of Björk, Julia Holter, Kelly Lee Owens and Cocteau Twins.

By Martha