Marconi Union

By blending guitar-driven, impressionistic sonic landscapes with a dash of post-rock, downtempo, and dub, Marconi Union brought ambient music into the 21st century with their debut album Under Wires and Searchlights in 2003. The group’s genesis traces back to musicians Jamie Crossley and Richard Talbot, who met while working at a record store in Manchester. The duo self-produced their 2003 critically-acclaimed first full-length and were quickly signed by independent label All Saints Records two years later. Distance (2005), their sophomore effort, veered towards darker-sounding electronica and featured prominent use of techno beats. After some issues with the label, A Lost Connection arrived in 2008 via their own MU Transmissions, which was followed by Tokyo (2009) and an EP entitled Glassworks, both released through Binemusic. Following the addition of live keyboardist Duncan Meadows to the band’s lineup in 2010, they had their big breakthrough moment with “Weightless,” an eight-minute track recorded in collaboration with the British Academy of Sound Therapy that aimed to reduce patients’ anxiety and heart rates. The track, which was picked up by Time Magazine in their Inventors of the Year list, even managed to get into Billboard’s Electronic and New Age charts. Marconi Union would continue in that direction with subsequent releases Beautifully Falling Apart (2011), Weightless (2012), and Different Colours (2012), their first album to feature Meadows. The next couple of years proved fruitful as the trio teamed up with bassist Jah Wobble for Anomic (2013) and provided music for Selfridges’ London installation A Distant Light in 2015. Ghost Stations, their cinematic ninth long-player, hit the shelves in 2016, and a collection of remixes saw the light a year later. They returned towards the end of the decade with Dead Air (2019) and the nocturnal Departures (2020), a reissue of a previously unreleased EP.