Cobalt Chapel

Psychedelic duo Cobalt Chapel unite the traditional and the modern perfectly in their acid folk-tinged choral prog. The pair meet Prog to discuss their classic prog inspirations from Van der Graaf Generator to Mike Oldfield, their new EP Mountain and how

A splash of acid folk colour from Regal Worm man Jarrod Gosling and actress/musician Cecilia Fage.

“What’s really wonderful about progressive music is that it feels like there are no rules,” marvels Cecilia Fage of Cobalt Chapel. “In fact, the more you want to experiment or tell a big story, the more it feels like that’s embraced. There doesn’t seem to be any limits to how theatrical you can go and it’s not pretentious or looked down upon.”

Cobalt Chapel are a living expression of this philosophy. Formed in 2014 when a mutual friend put Fage in touch with Jarrod Gosling – best known for his work in I Monster and Regal Worm – the duo set about shaping a spooky blend of acid folk, choral prog and psychedelia. At the heart of their sound, as heard on last year’s self-titled debut album, were Fage’s exquisite vocal layers and the textural otherness of Gosling’s vast collection of vintage organs.

“I’d been thinking about how to make a psychedelic album that didn’t have guitars or synths on it,” recalls Gosling. “Bo Hansson was a Swedish guy from the 60s who formed an instrumental duo called Hansson & Karlsson, which was just organ and drums. The whole sound came from just these two people and it was amazing.

“Another of my favourite bands is Van der Graaf Generator. For most of the 70s they didn’t have a bass player because Hugh Banton played the organ pedals as well. So you get this deep, dense sound. By limiting what sort of a sound you’re going to get, you can be more creative with the processing afterwards.”

The songs on Cobalt Chapel’s debut took inspiration from old folklore, sci-fi and obscure horror soundtracks, chiming with lyrical themes of suburban disquiet and everyday dread. A similar quality informs latest EP Mountain, though this time they’ve gone a little further out. The three tracks have a more pronounced electronic feel, making for a sharper contrast between Fage’s haunting English tones and Gosling’s pulsing rhythms: a union of the traditional and the modern.

This also happens to be an echo of the locale in which it was created. “There’s a repetitiveness to the verses on the title track,” muses sometime actress Fage, who has prior form as singer, arranger and woodwind player in Matt Berry & The Maypoles, “which almost feels like the idea of travelling and moving forward. For example, there’s a place near us in the Yorkshire Dales where people used to rest their dead hundreds of years ago. Back then, there was such a large distance between two parishes on the moors that they’d reach a particular stone, rest the coffin, take the load off, then carry on to the other side, where they could get a decent burial. You can feel the history around you in this area.”

Having uprooted her family and moved to West Yorkshire from London at the end of last year, Fage is now much nearer to Sheffieldbased Gosling. The pair can collaborate in real time, as opposed to sharing ideas across the internet. This perhaps accounts for the more spontaneous nature of the new EP, and nowhere is this more apparent than on the epic Canticle, a song that journeys from gentle

“What’s really wonderful about progressive music is that it feels like there

are no rules.”

Cecilia Fage

ambience to a thunderous psychedelic blowout across 10-plus minutes. Fage explains that the lyrics were written as a response to last year’s terrorist attacks in London and Manchester.

“The world has changed, so it’s a question of how we adjust to it,” she says. “For me, moving into a rural area has been a really wonderful thing. Canticle was inspired by not wanting to be ruled by that mindset of feeling so anxious. The song is partly an expression of that fight on a personal level

– an exploration of how ordinary people are brainwashed into committing such terrible acts – and a larger resistance against the dark power of these events themselves. It’s also an expression of my anger about the way these attacks are exploited to create divisions and push a racist, bigoted agenda.”

On a musical level, Canticle started out as a drone and just kept gathering layers. In addition to various organs (“My latest is an Elektronika, an ex-Soviet one shipped over from Poland,” Gosling enthuses), it makes use of Mellotron and sampled loops. “You end up with a weirder, eerie sound,” says Gosling, “with stops and starts in strange places. That’s prog and psychedelia, really. Those elements on the EP – experiments, I suppose – are going to find their way into the next album.”

Fage and Gosling aren’t hanging about. They’re already working on melodies and ideas for the follow-up to 2017’s self-titled debut album. “We’re both keen to try things and just see where they take us,” Fage says. “I think we’re going to use a few flutes and clarinets on the next one. And also we’re interested in sampling, using a lot of the things that Jarrod has in his arsenal of effects.”

In the meantime, this summer promises a third album under Gosling’s prog rocking Regal Worm banner. There’s also what he calls a “soft” Cobalt Chapel release, due later in the year. “I suppose it’s us working from the first album, but stripping and reimagining what we’ve done,” Fage explains. “It’s like remixes, but not remixes, if that makes sense.”

Amid this flurry of activity, prog remains an important touchstone for both of them. Gosling grew up listening to his dad’s collection of Yes and Genesis cassettes, an experience that fed into his formative years with Dean Honer in electronica duo I Monster.

“When Dean and I started I Monster in the 90s, I began sampling Mellotrons and flutes and getting those kinds of prog elements into techno,” Gosling explains.

His prog instincts bisect with those of Fage, especially when it comes to Mike Oldfield. “Ommadawn and Incantations are like desert island albums for me,” he states. “It’s the way they’re put together, building tracks up.”

Fage adds: “When I first started working on stuff with Matt Berry years ago, we both brought Mike Oldfield influences to what we were doing. As well as the fact that he had all these different instruments, there was an unashamed use of recorder and clarinet. And, of course, the female vocals. I’ve always wanted to make a track where I can just wail!”