The Dew Line

With his solo project Gate, Michael Morley of The Dead C has explored wide terrain, from sluggish free rock to wailing arcs of feedback, through thick walls of electronics and even, on Saturday Night Fever, bowdlerised disco. But The Dew Line is one of his finest and most coherent albums. Bleary-eyed and downcast, the opening three songs, “Millions”, “Needed All Words”, and “Have Not”, still feel like career bests, the blank layers of drone that support “Needed All Words” giving way to the thick, heady two-chord strum of “Have Not”, Morley’s voice muffled, lost in the grain. From there, The Dew Line blurs into a series of indistinct secular hymns to shortwave broadcasts and long-distance communications.