Sliding Through The Senses: Marconi Union at Samuel Worth Chapel

I’m so late coming into Sheffield – having been pressed up against the window of a stationary Northern train for over an hour while the driver debated turning back to Wakefield – that I’m worried I’ll miss the whole gig. But when I finally make it to the Sheffield General Cemetery, I forget all about my delay repay. I’m met with an immense stone arch, leading into a low-lit path through the cemetery. It’s dark, and totally quiet. I feel like I’m walking into another world.

The Samuel Worth Chapel looms before me, standing proud on neo-classical pillars, its huge stained glass windows emitting a warm glow. Inside, the venue is intimately sized, people sitting around small round tables as Greg Zogg warms up with an ambient soundscape. It’s small without feeling cramped: the ceiling is extravagantly high, and the stained glass looks even more impressive from inside.

I grab a beer and scramble to find a seat just before Marconi Union come out. Their stage presence is understated, both seated on a slightly raised platform at the front of the room. When the lights go down, there’s a tangle of wires shadowed against the wall, pedals blinking softly. Duncan Meadows sits upright behind a keyboard stack, while Jamie Crossley melts into his guitar, his eyes closed for most of the set. The vast space of blank wall behind them is taken up by a huge, gently fuzzed projection, their heads barely touching the bottom of the images.

A decade ago, Marconi Union’s track ‘Weightless’ received a lot of buzz in the press: it was part of a scientific study which deemed it the most relaxing song in the world. ‘Weightless’ is a beautiful, cleansing track, but it seems wrong to reduce Marconi Union’s diverse, subtle and often intense discography into the “sleep playlist” corner of ambient music.

This set definitely isn’t putting me to sleep. They open with ‘Strata’, a simmering mix of fluttery bass and soft breakbeat drums, building into a euphoric crescendo of ringing guitar. Behind the band, the projection plays fuzzed pink images reminiscent of moon landing footage. At the end of the track, it goes dark and silent, and the crowd break into applause. I’m used to electronic music acts leading seamlessly from one track into the next, but the enthusiastic applause enables a sense of participation from a seated crowd who might feel static otherwise. 

We’re treated to several tracks from Marconi Union’s newest album, The Fear of Never Landing (2025). Lonely piano keys echo through the eerie opening of ‘Crystalline’, which slowly builds into a rich net of synth and intricate, purposeful bass. The initial unease transforms into a sense of strength and power, every instrumental flourish placed with unerring precision. ‘Silence Is Gliding’ is slower and more mellow, but no less evocative.

And we get to hear a bit of ‘Weightless’ too – although they’ve chosen ‘Part 5’, not the famously relaxing ‘Part 1’. There’s still the low, murmured synths and mellow piano, but this part is underpinned by a firm, shimmery cymbal rhythm that stops things from getting too sleepy. The projection screen moves through space-age reds and images that look like brain scans as they play ‘Through The Heat Waves’. Faint guitar tingles through the soft, dense fog. The pace picks up again with ‘Eight Miles High Alone’, featuring Air-esque distorted vocals, somehow both mournful and optimistic. 

Ambient music is often branded as unobtrusive background noise, but I’m finding this listening experience almost overwhelming as it slides through the senses. Especially in the chapel, with its intricate, expansive design, the room feels as though it’s literally filled with music, swelling from the floor, rising through to the high ceiling and beyond. 

Marconi Union return to some of their earlier work with ‘Sleepless’, from Distance (2005). For a twenty-year-old track, it still feels like it’s speaking the same language as the rest of their setlist. It’s followed by ‘Sleeper’, from Ghost Stations (2016), picking up the same night-time feel – although to me, perhaps this is the more sleepless-sounding of the two. It’s bassy, slightly erratic in places, full of moody intensity. 

Then it’s back to The Fear of Never Landing for ‘In Motion’, building up a drum beat to a practically danceable tempo then dropping into thoughtful piano. They close out the set with an uptempo mix of ‘Cloudsurfing’, packed with wriggling bass and keening hints of vocal texture. It’s a big, purposeful track, and it feels like a sense of release at the end of the journey. 

In such a strange, intense venue, isolated in the middle of a cemetery, this set felt like a brilliant secret, a precious stone hidden away from the well-trodden path. 

Words by Rowan Morrow