Even with a coterie of collaborators, this Scottish-Filipino artist channels the beauty of loneliness

Melancholy feelings are no longer the preserve of the lonely, at least for those lucky enough to hear Time Beyond The Edges on Shady Ridge Records.

Despite being joined by a number of talented collaborators, including Blanket Swimming and Karen Vogt to name just two, The Lonely Bell’s new album is contentedly adrift in odes to a beautiful existential fugue.

Anyone who is a fan of the alias knows the power they have to create these great sprawling and maudlin worlds. Ghost Town Burning gave us an ashen locale in the grips of its slow (possibly eternal) disintegration. Indeed, the release before this, Impermanence Unfolding, is an unending 34-minute raga of reserved solemnity.

But here, on this latest album, we see brilliant moments of life breach the usual melancholic mist.

Precipice is an undulating, dour grey painting, welcoming us to the album with The Lonely Bell’s familiar minimalistic tone. The loop is hypnotic and rich, with the help of Taennya, but it has that stark nature that we have come to know from the artist, broken towards the end by a slow-club kick drum beat, clearing the haze slightly.

Then, on In Another Life, piano gracefully takes centre stage, the tone shifts completely. Everything is crystal clear – and beautifully timed with the help of classically-trained pianist Anastasiya Ihnatovich. Grief is a dancer, no longer squinted at and perceived barely through the foggy ambience – though a dull euphoria does subtly encircle the notes gradually.

Once again, on our title track Time Beyond The Edges, we risk fading back into this greyed-out phantom backdrop, only for Shell, with its heartbreaking refrain, Jane Bruckner’s feature carrying echoes of Aphex Twin’s more solemn offerings, to appear like a beacon of maudlin light. The loneliness is no longer just a backdrop; it is an active entity.

Elsewhere, like on tracks Spectral Tapestry and Frozen Forever, we’re permitted to float through the more open-ended epic ambient soundscapes we’ve come to know from The Lonely Bell, but again it’s where the artist chooses to reveal themselves in between these shrouds – often arm in arm with collaborators – that enliven the album as a whole.

Hadley Roe injects a devastating sense of melancholy in her feature, dejected piano – definitive in its mood – is flanked afterwards by a hopeful but hurt woodwind instrument. Similarly in We’ll Return To The Stars, ghostly voices swirl around a stalwart phone message of reassurance. The Lonely Bell and Lyndsie Alguire find, in this track, the beauty of grief. Those moments where connection and companionship pull us from low points and allow us to soar.

Making the bleak beautiful is difficult enough; to find the right scope and mood to allow us to appreciate negative emotions. But here, The Lonely Bell goes a step further, sadness becomes serenity throughout the album. The artist wisps quietly into the backdrop to then twirl forward, breaking the ambient fugue along with a collaborator, further gilding the intricate edges of each beautiful track.