With both band name and title invoking visual media it’s perhaps inevitable to be drawn to the cinematic in addressing this debut collection from Miniseries. Pilot might even have been storyboarded, such is the thoughtful, episodic, visual nature of its twelve-piece sequence, and while it adventurously careens through often spooky, unsettling spaces, it retains a definite sense of structuring.
Miniseries derives from a chance meeting – backstage at Glastonbury – between Angie Gannon from The Magic Numbers and Doug Morch late of Longview; the pair, who share and exchange vocals, further recruited guitarist Dermot Watson of The Dials, Doug’s former bandmate bassist Aidan Banks, and drummer Danny Abbasi. Pilot is their joint venture, enabled and realised with the assistance of go-to producer Sean Read, mainly recorded at Edwyn Collins’ Helmsdale Studios.
Their music builds out of a world of theme-tune and soundtrack to encompass a wide spectrum stretching from kosmische through saccharine underground to rustic folk, presenting a thoughtful sonic adventure. If Gannon’s synths and keyboards are often to the fore, the guitars and drums respond with equal incisiveness as sounds meld. Song titles, while brief, at times a single-word descriptor – Sepia, Dandelion – point towards rich plays of language.
The brief introductory Pilot Theme is lush and haunting, nostalgically gothic, conjuring a sway of scarlet veil across the mind’s eye; then once the curtains open, the trip well and truly begins. You’re Gold comes all in a rush with something of David Lynch by way of Steve Albini in the skitters and infiltrations; a sense of small creatures and the repeated lyrical lift from Robert Frost – “nothing gold can stay” – suggesting autumn leaves. Its later companion piece Sepia will present a similarly short, equally evocative lyric containing the album’s most memorable metaphor: “Memories begin to lose colours to the void / Like reverse polaroids”.
Offcumdens – a mysterious coinage from the Calder Valley meaning blow-ins – unsettles. There’s a touch of Midlake to its air of woodland folk, and distinctly disturbing undercurrents, only gradually revealed in lyrics like “we come to die under Yorkshire sky” and “I am the great white male”. In contrast, Dandelion’s thudding bass opening precipitating a jazz-rock tracked pursuit seems open and bright, except is there threat in the reiterated “problem is that you’re not mine”?
Pastoral guitar and lap steel embark on an extended meander before the verse materialises and turns Open Season into a very different tale, involving betrayal and whatever else “now it’s everybody for themselves”. Loose-handed drums and evocative guitar taking a momentary desert turn accompany the twin vocals mapping The Speck’s vision of disintegration, and Gannon and Morch trade verses on Swimming Pool; ‘Some Velvet Morning’ through Ballardian filter.
The penultimate Ghost Telephones, choppy and menacing, brings brisk repetitions and insistent percussions, presents tunnel visions of dead railway stations, and ends with faltering piano coda. It’s preceded by the affecting Way Before Me; Angie’s voice imbued with a deep air of something between sadness and resignation. Lastly comes May You Always, which, after brief drone and chorale, builds into a soaring benediction replete with Read’s transcendent horns.
An intriguing record; a little time invested, and the alert listener should be hooked. Its sound and the mysteries are addictive, such that its precision, variety, and sheer fascination won’t loose their grip easily.
Pilot (November 7th, 2025) Rips Music
Order Pilot: Vinyl/CD | Bandcamp (Digital)
Miniseries Tour Dates
Tickets: https://www.miniseriesmusic.com
NOVEMBER
Sunday 9 – The Betsey Trotwood, London
APRIL 2026
Friday 3 – The Lamplighter, Northampton
Saturday 4 – Mist Rolling Inn, Nottingham
Wednesday 8 – The Waiting Room, London
Friday 10 – The Eagle Inn, Salford