Tip! In his latest release, Gordon Chapman-Fox's Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan continues to dissect the legacy of the New Towns era, this time illuminating the role that Public Works and Utilities have played in shaping collective memory and daily existence. Public Works and Utilities is not a mere paean to the infrastructure imagined by previous generations, but rather a critique of its gradual erosion—a process accelerated by decades of austerity and privatization. Throughout six interconnected tracks, Chapman-Fox crafts evocative musical landscapes, wielding analog synths and pulsing rhythms to trace the arc from utopian planning to present-day disenchantment. Songs like “Water Treatment Works” and the sprawling “The People Matter” evoke a sense of lived experience within the grid of modernity, merging ambient textures with almost danceable grooves that reflect both resilience and exhaustion.

The album’s thematic weight is supported by Chapman-Fox’s live sensibility: much of the material originated from performances, infusing the record with a rawer, more immediate edge than previous releases. This approach heightens the tension between sound and subject, embedding moments of hope and community within layers that also imply obsolescence and loss. The sonic palette channels influences reminiscent of Boards of Canada, but the project’s distinctive narrative drive and aesthetic referencing British government media of the seventies and eighties set it apart. The vinyl release, under Castles in Space, is noteworthy not only for its high production values but for artwork that continues to nurture the visual universe WRNTDP has meticulously built.

While Chapman-Fox’s earlier works dwelled in ambient introspection, Public Works and Utilitiesmoves with confidence towards more rhythmically insistent territory. Yet, introspection remains: the music is desolate, yet weirdly hopeful, with Chapman-Fox’s anger at the state of national infrastructure palpable but never overwhelming. The tracks ask listeners to reflect on what public services once meant and what they have become, all while providing an immersive, forward-thinking listening experience. The album’s extended closing track, “The People Matter,” is especially powerful, drawing out themes of community and survival over its eighteen-minute span—a bold, unhurried meditation that serves as the emotional core of the record.

Ultimately, Public Works and Utilities is a testament to the enduring spirit of those whose daily lives are shaped by the mechanisms of public service, even as those mechanisms falter. Chapman-Fox crafts not only a soundtrack for the decline of the post-war consensus, but a subtle call to recognize—and reclaim—the promise of collective infrastructure. The album offers no simple answers, but it insists that questions of public good remain urgent and unresolved, resonating across every echo of concrete and every pulse of the grid.