Bido Lito June 2021 Issue 114

time. Even his voice, people don’t have that accent
anymore. It’s a piece of time delivered to people.”
The mechanics of the fairground seeped in
the very production of Coral Island, the gear itself
mimicking sounds and the oddness of a temporary,
rootless community. It took a lot of graft to make it
sound “wrong”, as James puts it.
“To move something out of time so it would be
not correct, or not in time. Or if the tape is broken
and everything is moving at different times, it
almost sounds as if you’re playing a music box with
the batteries running out. If you go to those places,
the seaside or a fair, and they turn the machines
on they don’t just come on like they would if it
was digital. It’s like coming to life. It’s not a digital
moment. It’s real, the way the wind is real. Like a
broken fairground ride.”
So. Coral Island, the place itself. Does the band
have an image of what it is, an idea of where it is
located? Cardiff-based Edwin Burdis created a
sizeable walk-in sculpture of the island, seen on
the album artwork, but that is Burdis’ vision alone.
Is Coral Island the band’s very own Coney Island
but based locally? An actual familiar seaside place
from all our childhoods: Blackpool, New Brighton,
Llandudno, Rhyl?
“I’ve always found it a place where I can relax,
and I can’t always relax in some places. It’s a holiday
from life, you come back to it,” James says of his
Welsh holidays as adult and child, but his personal
vision of the island takes him to more surreal
territory, melting together 1960s sci-fi thriller and
high-concept psychological drama The Prisoner,
and folk horror movie The Wicker Man. With
elements of Lost, maybe.
“Like a series I wanted to see. It was more this
strange place just floating in the sea of your mind.
Almost a metaphor for your imagination. That’s
what it was to me. Probably be something else to
someone else. It can be what it is to you. That’s
what it is. Half the time I don’t want to know what
the person’s vision is in my head. My version would
be better to me.”
We’ve seen independent artists with a proven
fanbase triumph in the album chart over the
past few months – Jane Weaver went top 25,
The Anchoress top 40, The Coral’s Modern Sky
labelmate Jamie Webster at number six late last
summer – which is doubly impressive given the
zero opportunity to engage with audiences in the
traditional sense. In the end, Coral Island surpasses
James Skelly’s expectations easily, reaching number
two. It feels timely to recall how the record’s single
from March, Lover Undiscovered, reminds us of how
as adults we view the world through cynical weary
eyes.
“One day you’ll see a seagull fly above the sea
and it’s almost like CGI and think, have I manifested
this? How is this happening? How has it gone from
being nothing to just gas, or whatever it was when
the big bang happened, to that? It’s a discovered
moment again,” he told me.
Maybe the message got through, via the
airwaves. Through Spotify, and those vinyl copies of
the album in every colour of the rainbow. How we
take things for granted, take creatives for granted.
Whatever it is, the mystical Coral Island is doing its
magic for the band, both on the record and off it.
The Coral Rediscovered, indeed. !
Words: Cath Holland / @cathholland01
Photography: John Johnson / @john.johno
Coral Island is available now via Run On Records in
association with Modern Sky.
thecoral.co.uk
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