I've never made it to England. Loved by Joe Strummer, loathed by Johnny Rotten, and regarded by Morrissey with an affectionate disdain, it sure sounds like a hell of a place.

Especially Lancashire. It sits in the northwest of the country on the Irish Sea, which is about all I know. But Lancashire is where you'll find Richard Skelton, diligently honing his craft, enough for me to label it a prime destination. Some writers less prone to gushing might be inclined to characterize this as an accomplished debut and leave it at that. But to hear Marking Time, the first album Skelton has released under his own name, is an experience deserving of so much more, and to speak of it as merely "accomplished" would be an insult.

Skelton's songs are intricate, composed of strings and keys which transcend ambience and ascend to dreary, overcast heights. His sound is arrhythmic and devoid of melody, the music given room to spread its legs and lope across wide, arcing panoramas rarely captured on tape. Granges, shores and brooks are the settings of entirely sonic dioramas, and listening to the album in New York, one can't help but feel a sense of being transported to the other side of the Atlantic. The word 'soundscape' fell victim to overuse long ago, yet it might be the most apt to describe the breathtaking scope of Marking Time. I guess I could just drop some buzzwords like "epic" or "grandiose" and call it a day, but then this review would sound more like a press kit than a critique. The catch is, I'd still be describing Marking Time down to the "T".

The best way that I can think to describe the magnitude of the sounds contained therein would be as a game of Jenga, each layer of violin and piano upping the ante, each note stacked precariously on top of the last to build a tower of uncertainty and tension. If this all sounds too overt or immediate, then forgive me for misleading, because that couldn't be further from the truth. Marking Time is actually quite sparse and its arrangement minimal. But that's the only way the music can work - remember, a heavy hand in Jenga will make the sticks collapse under their own weight.

In fact, the record's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness, something upon which I fixated the first time I listened to it, and that is the subtlety. At times the atmospherics are too shy for their own good, and unassuming tracks like "Brook" can be easily forgotten, allowed to pass unnoticed amidst the din of infants, cell phones, and television sets. The first few go-rounds had me thinking that Richard Skelton belonged on the CDs at Target that purportedly help you fall asleep, and I came ready to write this album off as pretty, articulate, and ultimately bland ambience. But by the third or fourth spin, Marking Time had revealed itself as the work of brilliance it truly is. It held me firm in its grip, and hasn't let go since.

For a span of forty minutes, Skelton's work evokes an entire spectrum of emotion and thought: wistfulness, calm, reflection, nostalgia, desolation, brooding, foreboding, and isolation, to name a few. But when the finale of "Stake" passes gently, a lone violin holding out as the tide sweeps back into the Irish Sea, there is only one thing on my mind.

Fight the current, swim back to shore, and start all over again.

-Andy Kissner