Jim Haynes Telegraphy By The Sea CD HMS 009 Musique Machine by Roger Batty Issue 548, October 17, 2006 Telegraphy By The Sea finds Haynes building a rich and varied collection of drone textures, going from clearly organic dry crackles to deeper more lushly dark electronics. Covering a lot of ground in it's near on hour running time-from mysterious, haunting, to rewarding. It's nicely presented in a grim hand-printed letterpress & silkscreen artwork of telegraph poles on black paper by Haynes himself, which seems to illustrate the weather worn and decaying and rusting drone quality of the sounds with in perfectly. The sound having the feeling of been organic, as if it's caught on the wind or humming up through the earth or vibrations of wires. Yet still very much composed sound tones been manipulated into atmospheric and building banks of sound, almost like vaguely melodic fog slipping out of ones stereo and growing into your listening space, almost giving the feeling of the outside inside. It brings to mind either slowly advancing grey seascapes or black and white footage of endless treeless deserter, the only things standing lines upon lines of telegraph poles. As the sounds build up density it has almost a deep space feel, as the drones seem to become denser and more claustrophobic almost like dark bone chilling star constellations pressing in on you. But just as it feels it going to engulf you with the thickness of tone, it drops down to a slow wine glass humming harmonic drone, before building up layers of sound, but not as denser as before. A wonderful drone becomes the focus of the track almost like the sorrowful low drone of a cello, giving a real emotional depth to the piece, before returning to the denser more deep space drones. Like all great long form soundpaintings and atmospheric sound worlds, this changers , grows or dies back to a near murmur. Haynes keeps the listener guessing and captivated to were he will take the piece next.This only has a small pressing of 500, so don't think about picking this up for too long. A rewarding and deep work of sound art.