THE HAUNTED GENERATION
BOB FISCHER ROUNDS UP THE LATEST NEWS FROM THE PARALLEL WORLDS OF POPULAR HAUNTOLOGY
“It’s that ‘end of summer’ thing,” says Keith Seatman. “All the holiday-makers have gone, and you can see the grassy bits on the beach again. It can be eerie, and it can be wonderful. As soon as dusk falls, anything at the funfair looks weird...”
There is something deliciously otherworldly about the nature of the British seaside resort: the clanging fairground rides, the gaudy lights of the amusement arcades, the legacy of “Kiss Me Quick” sauciness and mystical, end-of-the-pier soothsaying. These memories are distilled almost overwhelmingly on Keith’s new album Time to Dream But Never Seen ,an extraordinary, hallucinatory evocation of a childhood spent in Southsea, Hampshire.
“The summer holidays would kick in, and for the first few weeks you’d be on the beach, down the fair, and on the pier,” he remembers. “Then you’d hit the middle... and the last few weeks had this weird feeling of impending doom.”
The album is structured to reflect this progression of the school holidays: from fizzy, sunshine-fuelled excitement, to mid-August ennui, to the chilling, autumnal melancholy that the adult Keith now finds so affecting. It’s swathed in tootling fairground organs, psychedelic sound collage and the feel of vintage BBC Radiophonic Workshop experimentation: perhaps appropriately, given that one of Keith’s childhood playgrounds was the nowderelict Fraser Gunnery Range, the imposing naval establishment used as a location for the 1972 Doctor Who story, ‘The Sea Devils’.
Elsewhere, regular collaborator Douglas E Powell (whose own splendid folk album, Overnight Low , is out in April) provides a hypnotic spoken word interlude entitled ‘Speak Your Piece’, seemingly a list of arcane, rural aphorisms: “Never toil on Sunday, the Good Lord tells us so / Save your back ‘til Monday, and I’ll give you seeds to sow.” It all coalesces to form an utterly intoxicating concoction, and it’s available now from the Castles in Space label.
Keith’s album comes complete with glowing sleeve notes from Jim Jupp, cofounder of the legendary Ghost Box Records, and there are exciting developments on the Ghost Box front, too. April sees the release of Puzzlewood, the long-awaited new album from Plone. This Birmingham-based outfit were exploring retro-futurist sounds as early as the 1990s, and even their own history has a delightfully appropriate fuzziness: although Puzzlewood is described as their third album, the second has never officially materialised, despite countless nebulous rumours and bootlegs.
Regardless, Puzzlewood isa terrific comeback. A gloriously melodic homage to a golden age of library music (I defy anyone to hear ‘Years and Elements’ without imagining the BBC’s iconic Test Card F, bridging the gap between Open University modules), it’s refreshingly joyous and upbeat. Vintage synth sounds leap around playfully, and there are nods to the earliest days of computer gaming too. ‘Sunvale Run’ sounds for all the world like the theme music to some jolly 1980s arcade game; perhaps not surprisingly given that core member Mike Johnston was also a founder of the ZX Spectrum Orchestra. As ever with Ghost Box releases, Julian House’s accompanying artwork is perfect; and its lurid sweetshop qualities were apparently inspired by the vast collection of vintage ephemera amassed by Stockport man John Townsend, as immortalised in the new book Wrappers Delight (see FT389:66, 390:36-39).
Also catching my attention recently: Parapsychedelia by Heartwood Manse, a transAtlantic collaboration between Cumbria’s Heartwood Institute and California’s Panamint Manse. Taking the spirit of 1970s psychic research as its inspiration (track titles include ‘Zenner Cards’ and ‘Precognition’) this new album effortlessly weaves woozy analogue electronica and skittering beats around evocative soundbite samples. “Only now are we beginning to understand the strange and mysterious powers that exist in all of us...” crackles opening track ‘Clairvoyeurism’, instantly transporting me back to unsettling Tuesday evenings in front of Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World.
And I can also recommend After Lights Out by Capac, a collaboration with Northampton poet Tom Harding, and a wonderfully atmospheric ambient/spoken word exploration of the strangeness and disquiet of the night-time. “The room, the moonlight, the chair by the window, waiting as if for a ghost...” deadpans Harding, on ‘Night Noises’.
Magnificently, the physical release comes in the form of an MP3 player embedded within a matchbox, complete with accompanying candle... which we are invited to light in a darkened room for the ultimate nocturnal listening experience. The perfect album for anyone who has lain awake at 3.30am, desperately attempting not to over-think the mysterious creaking coming from the airing cupboard.
Visit the Haunted Generation website at www.hauntedgeneration.co.uk, send details of new releases, or memories of the original “haunted” era to hauntedgeneration@gmail.com, or find me on Twitter... @ bob_fischer