Tim and Roo Farthing seem to be slowly drifting away from the eerie electronic style that distinguished them at the beginning of their career. Their latest release is seeped in a familiar stew of creepy sounds, however they’ve peppered the familiar haunted electronic ambience and distorted spoken word vocals with calm, transcendent piano-driven pieces, the first example being ‘Mirrors at Night,’ which also features the soft raining plinks of an acoustic guitar. Electronic music and lyrics nearly become side notes here, splitting the album’s 11 tracks almost evenly with the new softer compositional sound. Reigns adamantly shows that they’ve evolved, refusing to be stagnated or locked into a category that they themselves created. If We Buried A Microphone Under the Ground was about capturing the darkness of the human heart, Causeway seems to be about calmly accepting the afterlife and the unknown. It’s a nicely developed concept and seems tailor-fit for the new sound. The liner notes include bare sketches of the different ‘rooms’ (tracks) of The House on the Causeway as part of the supposed investigation of a murder scene. Listening to the scuttling, scratching, and ethereal voices that are embedded into the tracks further the impression of the old haunted house. An ambitious concept that paints the mental picture intended is a good one. This is a nice piece of ambient work to add to the catalogue of Operatives A & B.
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