ANDREW HEATH – AIRSHIPS & AERONAUTS
The latest Andrew Heath album is entirely dedicated to (and inspired by) ‘the age when powered flight was in its infancy: the wonderful romance of travelling by air and the elegance and style of technology and its bold new practitioners’.
Musically, it is a companion album to his 2025 album Signals and Codes which dealt with academic research into paranormal abilities. Two entirely different themes, of course, but both dealing with science investigating paths that were not understood before.
The titles on Airships & Aeronauts all refer to the early aviatory age: The Navigator’s Lament, Plotting New Courses, Taking Compass Readings, Lectures On Radio Telegraphy. With a bit of fantasy while playing this music you can easily drift away in your own imaginary airship.
But at the same time, this music could have been about many other different themes, so pick one you like.
The music is as we came to expect from Andrew Heath: immaculately recorded soundscapes with a beautiful balance of electronic and acoustic instruments. Highly detailed and highly dynamic: Heath‘s music is the exact opposite of the flat, compressed music we’ve been too familiar with since the ‘loudness wars’.
‘Technology seemed to changing fast as one new development was overtaken by another and at the centre of it all were the men and women that powered it all, that pulled the leavers and watched the dials, that took compass readings and plotted courses’.
When listening to this music, I can almost imagine Andrew Heath himself ‘pulling the leavers and watching the dials’.
Airships And Aeronauts is available as a limited CDr, as well as digital. The CDr is available from Andrew Heath‘s Bandcamp page as well as from the Driftworks page.
