THE HAUNTED GENERATION
BOB FISCHER ROUNDS UP THE LATEST NEWS FROM THE PARALLEL WORLDS OF POPULAR HAUNTOLOGY...
“I think that ‘fuzziness’ contributes to the nostalgia factor,” says musician Jonathan Sharp, founder and guiding light of The Heartwood Institute. “Honestly, it’s like looking through a slightly oblique window onto a different world. And really, it was a completely different world in so many ways...”
We’re talking about the faded, pale quality of the 1970s family photographs recently discovered by Jonathan amongst his mother’s belongings. The photos provide evocative snapshots of a childhood spent primarily amongst the woods, hills and languid seaside towns of his native Cumbria, and have yielded the inspiration for his new solo album, Divided Time. It’s a wistful evocation of blissfully indolent days spent amongst occasionally mystical landmarks. “The opening track is inspired by a really early photo from 1970 of me looking at Castlerigg Stone Circle, a place I just keep going back to,” muses Jonathan. “I actually have no memory of that photo, so I was so surprised to find I’d been there as such a small child. Maybe that’s where my obsession with the place started...”
The album is a beautiful collection of elegiac piano and synth-led pieces, with hints of glockenspiel that occasionally conjure up daydreams of long-ago school music lessons. It harks back to an ‘analogue’ childhood still shaped by family traditions: “Cherry Woods...” ponders Jonathan, referring to the album’s mid-point track, and its accompanying picture of his childhood self, framed in silhouette amidst twilit trees. “It’s a wood close to where I grew up. It’s not on any map under that name, that’s just what we called it... and how it had always been known to my parents’ generation. But obviously in the world of Google Maps, it doesn’t exist under that name. Which says a lot about how digitalisation has reshaped our lives...”
Divided Time will be available on limited edition vinyl, and via download, from the Castles In Space label. The label’s other recent releases have included the Visage Pale album Holistic Love, a moving collection of gentle, electro-pop songs, performed in both French and English by Lausanne-based Lars-Martin Isler; and Civilian Leather by The Home Current, which evokes memories of Factory Records’ earliest dabblings with post-punk electronica. Visit castlesinspace. bandcamp.com.
Pondering Jonathan’s beloved Cherry Woods led me neatly onto enjoying a new collection of music from Stephen Prince’s ongoing project A Year in The Country, a multi-media exploration of “otherly pastoralism; the flipside of bucolic dreams”. The Watchers is a compendium of tracks by 11 different artists, all reflecting on the nature of our native trees as, effectively, time travellers. Britain boasts over 3,000 trees that date back at least 400 years, and over 100 that can claim to have been rooted in our soil for 1,000 years or thereabouts. All the while, quietly observing the passage of time – of (as Stephen puts it) “invasions by wooden ships, sword and arrow, the passing of the old ways and the times of witchcraft and magic, the coming of the industrial revolution and the dawning of the digital age.”
Individual trees provide very personal inspiration for some of the artists participating. Vic Mars takes Hertfordshire’s 900-yearold Eardisley Oak as the muse for his gentle, pastoral instrumental The Test of Time, and The Winter Dream of Novel’s Oak by Howlround is created from field recordings of an 800-year-old tree in Tilford, Surrey. It’s a warm, touching tribute to the receding wild woodlands of the British countryside, and – for maximum listening pleasure – perfect for an early summers’ evening constitutional through the copse or thicket of your choice. It’s available from ayearinthecountry.co.uk.
And any of the above recordings might provide the ideal soundtrack to reading a new novel by journalist and occasional Ghost Box Records collaborator Mark Brend. Undercliff tells the story of divorced writer Martyn Hope, who, in the summer of 1972, finds himself alone in London and drawn into the increasingly sinister cult of The Olive Grove, a religious community steeped in that distinctly 1970s combination of born-again Christianity and post-hippy New Ageism. When his girlfriend Amelia vanishes, he suspects answers are to be found at the cult’s ramshackle retreat, Undercliff, a rambling country home on the very edge of Devon’s crumbling coastline. It’s a languid, leisurely tale, rich in character and period detail, and the darkness creeps in almost imperceptibly. I enjoyed it enormously, and – in my mind – have already cast Robert Powell and Anouska Hempel in the lead roles, with Pentangle providing the music for the Olive Grove’s in-house folk-rock group, The Flock. Mark is at minutebook.co.uk.
Visit the new Haunted Generation website at 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