Rustin Man, recently released Drift Code. The full-length is his second, and now available via Domino Records. Before he became Rustin Man, he was known as Paul Webb, former bass player and founder member of Talk Talk and O’rang. Drift Code is Rustin Man’s first release since 2002’s ‘Out Of Season’ album, recorded with Portishead’s Beth Gibbons.

Rustin Man on Drift Code:

“I’ve called the album ‘Drift Code’ because I like the tension that’s created when things seem regimented, rigid or stable on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you discover something free-spirited and against the grain lurking beneath. I also like the idea that life is just a puzzle that can’t be solved because the answer is always changing.”

On Talk Talk:

“Talk Talk was a kind of schooling for me. It was Mark Hollis who first turned me on to Sketches of Spain and Astral Weeks, and those are the kind of records I’ve always tried to make, records that take people somewhere for a while, preferably via a route they’ve never been before. I like the idea of music as escapism. I’ve separated myself from the world making this album and I’d like to think it could do that for people while they listen to it.”

Aside from Webb and Harris, Drift Code also features various local orchestral players and Webb’s old Essex school-friend Snowboy, who brought in a rare keyboard, the Clavioline, one of the instruments another eccentric auteur, Joe Meek, used on The Tornados’ 1962 classic Telstar. It helps bring a colour to the music which relates to the haunted sound of Out Of Season, and which may become a Rustin Man trademark, the sound of a semi-opaque window onto a real or imagined past, of time trapped in amber. No surprise, considering there’s a decade and a half of its creator’s life inside these songs, time spent reaching out for something ungraspable.

Rustin Man
Drift Code
tracklisting

Vanishing Heart
Judgement Train
Brings Me Joy
Our Tomorrows
Euphonium Dream
The World’s In Town
Light The Light
Martian Garden
All Summ