James Lees

4000 Records

Only Children

Fictions

Spirit Lights

'Only Children' is a collaborative work between Anthony Christopher (Fictions), James Lees (Ghostwoods, Silver Sircus), and Joshua MacGregor (Spirit Lights).

Developed out of demos and sketches initially recorded to a mobile phone, compositions were approached in a similar way to painting - thinking about sound as brushstrokes on a canvas, as colour or texture, then stepping back to examine how different elements interact together. Altering or reducing until an image formed. Recorded in a home studio environment by Jim Jones (Scum Vegas) across 2023-2024, the collective contributions birthed something that feels simultaneously intimate and distant, existing at the border between the alluring and the ominous sides of suspense.

Making use of piano, nylon string guitar, drums, synthesisers and drone elements, the album’s nine tracks traverse themes of identity, creation, human limitations and obsessions, illusion versus reality, and time’s passage.

Symbolism is deployed across the album as a vehicle for storytelling and predominantly has origins in nature and memory. Much like the artworks selected, sounds from the natural world are used symbolically throughout to communicate movement, tension, and turning points. Sounds drawn from musical instruments serve a similar purpose in signalling changes to scenery, as is reflected in album centrepiece Murmuration which uses enveloping orchestral strings, coiling piano runs and trailing sine wave arpeggios to symbolise the synchronised movements and patterns of birds swarming in the sky. Similarly, opening track Spinning sonically depicts totems of childhood. An exploration of the contrasts between innocence and corruption, the surface and the unseen threats that lie beneath it, the long-form piece of music transpires in slow motion across an imagined playground-like setting with hypnotic nylon string guitar figures and sparse drums left hanging in the air until delicate piano phrases provide a space for landing.


'Only Children' is a collaborative work between Anthony Christopher (Fictions), James Lees (Ghostwoods, Silver Sircus), and Joshua MacGregor (Spirit Lights).
Developed out of demos and sketches initially recorded to a mobile phone, compositions were approached in a similar way to painting - thinking about sound as brushstrokes on a canvas, as colour or texture, then stepping back to examine how different elements interact together. Altering or reducing until an image formed. Recorded in a home studio environment by Jim Jones (Scum Vegas) across 2023-2024, the collective contributions birthed something that feels simultaneously intimate and distant, existing at the border between the alluring and the ominous sides of suspense.
Making use of piano, nylon string guitar, drums, synthesisers and drone elements, the album’s nine tracks traverse themes of identity, creation, human limitations and obsessions, illusion versus reality, and time’s passage.
Symbolism is deployed across the album as a vehicle for storytelling and predominantly has origins in nature and memory. Much like the artworks selected, sounds from the natural world are used symbolically throughout to communicate movement, tension, and turning points. Sounds drawn from musical instruments serve a similar purpose in signalling changes to scenery, as is reflected in album centrepiece Murmuration which uses enveloping orchestral strings, coiling piano runs and trailing sine wave arpeggios to symbolise the synchronised movements and patterns of birds swarming in the sky. Similarly, opening track Spinning sonically depicts totems of childhood. An exploration of the contrasts between innocence and corruption, the surface and the unseen threats that lie beneath it, the long-form piece of music transpires in slow motion across an imagined playground-like setting with hypnotic nylon string guitar figures and sparse drums left hanging in the air until delicate piano phrases provide a space for landing.

James LeesBrisbane, Australia

James Lees
Brisbane, Australia