THE HAUNTED GENERATION
BOB FISCHER ROUNDS UP THE LATEST NEWS FROM THE PARALLEL WORLDS OF POPULAR HAUNTOLOGY
“I love that crossover of high strangeness in 1970s suburbia,” says Neil Scrivin. “Creepy stone heads dug up in a garden, poltergeist activity and apparitions of weird creatures. It could almost be a follow-up to The Stone Tape…”
The story of the Hexham Heads (FT294:42-47, 295:4449) is a Haunted Generation touchstone. Or rather two mysterious little touchstones, unearthed by brothers Colin and Leslie Robson in their Northumberland garden in the early 1970s. Bringing these tiny carved faces into the house seemingly unleashed a wave of supernatural strangeness, including nocturnal visitations from a bizarre half-man halfgoat creature and – as reported by Celtic artefacts expert Dr Anne Ross – an encounter with a passing werewolf. When the story was featured on BBC1’s current affairs programme Nationwide in 1976, it lodged forever into the fevered nightmares of children… well, nationwide. Neil, recording as The Night Monitor, has used it as the inspiration for his excellent new album, Horror of the Hexham Heads. “I’m on the sceptical side now,” he explains. “But my approach with The Night Monitor is always to take events at face value. I wanted to amplify the spooky aspects of the story, imagining the album as the mid-1970s soundtrack to a lost TV documentary”. It’s a splendid record, an evocative collection of sinister synth instrumentals and rather alarming soundscapes. Dig a couple up this April from libraryoftheoccult.bandcamp. com.
Equally fascinated by suburban 1970s rumness is Pete Hackett, although his new album Witchcraft in the Middle of England is not so much Frank Bough in a cosy cardigan as Pan’s People in spangly hotpants. Under his nom-de-plume Cult of Wedge, Pete is a master of old school feelgood pop music, following in the proud tradition of fellow hairy Brummies Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood. Either of whom could easily be responsible for a flurry of werewolf sightings themselves. With an opening number dedicated to the Enfield Poltergeist and a title track detailing Pete’s vain attempts to woo a Black Country sorceress, there’s poptastic fun galore. Summon the spirits to cultofwedge.bandcamp.com.
In the folk world, I very much recommend We Are All Ghosts, a new collaboration between Kitchen Cynics and Grey Malkin. It’s a collection of stunning supernatural ballads lent spine-chilling authenticity by the timeless vocals of Mr Cynics himself – aka Aberdeen singer-songwriter Alan Davidson. Bag a copy by materialising insubstantially at fennycompton. bandcamp.com. And staying north of the Scottish border, soothing folkloric ambience can be found on Clota, a new album of modular synth compositions dedicated to the Patron Goddess of the River Clyde. The exemplary work of Steven ‘Letters From Mouse’ Anderson, it flows freely through lettersfrommouse.bandcamp. com.
Similarly wistful is Bromham, a paean to faded childhood memories by the artist formally known as Alexander R Cargill Esq. Bromham itself is the tiny Wiltshire outpost where Alex spent his earliest years, and the album combines fuzzy BBC Schools electronics with spoken contributions from some of the village’s oldest residents – including Pete Paget, veteran chairman of the parish council, and Alex’s own 104-year-old Great Uncle Ivor. It’s located just off the A350 at woodfordhalse. bandcamp.com. Interested in darker fayre? In the Shadow of the Bomb is a new album by British
Stereo Collective, focusing on the more disturbing aspects of 1970s life. Think Two-tone meets Gary Numan, on a record that deals expertly with the lingering psychic trauma of power cuts and IRA bomb threats.Visit thebritishstereocollective. bandcamp.com.
The Endless Echo is the new album from Pye Corner Audio, inspired by composer Martin Jenkins’s fascination with his perception of all things temporal. “It’s an exploration of the elasticity of time,” says Martin. “Even though time is measurable, it’s often experienced in different ways. When I create music, hours can pass in what feels like minutes. Conversely, time slows to a crawl when you’re bored. And events in the past can seem an age ago, but also mere moments…” The album is a hypnotic collection of beats and woozy ambience, and if you can’t shuffle a foot to irresistible tracks like ‘On The Clock’ then you’ve probably slowed to a crawl yourself. Nudge the little hand forward to ghostbox.co.uk.
To finish off, it’s always nice to see Chris Sharp emerging from his underground bunker. Recording under the rather Brutalist pseudonym of Concretism, Chris has resumed his lifelong fascination with 20th century nuclear paranoia on a new single, 39 Furnival Street. “It was a secret Cold War telephone exchange in the heart of London,” he explains. “The single is a musical exploration of the tunnels, and the technology within them”. Comprising two slices of immaculate, beat-driven synth workouts and a flurry of associated remixes, downloads are available from concretism. bandcamp.com, with limited vinyl sold exclusively through normanrecords.com. Four-minute warning, passing werewolves and temporal elasticity permitting, both should be available by the time you read this article. Visit the Haunted Generation website at www.hauntedgeneration.co.uk, or email hauntedgeneration@gmail.com