Haunts, track by track
Seacliff
Seacliff was the first message to arrive, and I think its sense of place sets the scene for the whole of Haunts. I improvised the main keyboard part on dulcitone, added some rhythm, and a sample of Kathleen Ferrier (who also appears in sampled form on We Fold Ourselves, from Unearth), singing like a mermaid in the distance.
Human Estuary
The line “I sit still, and the world spins around me” captures the essence of this voicemail. It has a stillness and detachment that is captured in Nick Moss’ woodwind playing. Watching a stream of people drifting “from the main road into The Lanes” means this is definitely Brighton, and I think it captures how Brighton used to feel, and will again.
Inchkeith Island
This track starts with a recording I made of Pedr Browne hitting a sea buoy on the south coast of Skye:
The voice message is about a dream and an intention: “one day I’ll go there” and feel “alive and connected”. Marcus played the Görs & Kallman grand, and I added the pizzicato viol and Prophet and Moog synths.
The Garden
The Garden starts with a fragment of a nightingale song slowed down an octave and a half, or 150%. The idea was to reveal the internal rhythms and spaces in the birdsong, and set the scene for the retrospective story of a childhood journey through a garden, and away from the safety of home; Marcus played double bass, Dan Phillips played the violin, and I played piano and guitarviol.
The Pull & the ‘gong rack’
When I was making 1946 for 1 Inch: 1/2 Mile, in 2009, I had just done a Gamelan workshop, and became obsessed with making a lo fi tuned percussion instrument that I could record for my compositions in my studio.
It’s been a staple here ever since, most recently on the upcoming Netflix film Nailbomber. I bought a second hand shopping rack for clothes, and hung a paella pan, Victorian dinner gong, cymbal, wind chimes, and over the years added anything interesting I could find in junk shops to it, including a ship’s bell.
This ‘gong rack’ features on the Haunts track The Pull, recorded on these 1950s Reslo ribbon microphones:
I bought one of these mics in Portobello Market for £20 in 2019. It was frankly a bit dodgy (I’m not complaining at that price), but ribbon mic supremo Stewart Tavener of Xaudia brought it back to life, supplied a matching twin, and on my felted Consolette piano and percussion they produce an otherwordly colour from another time that I absolutely love.
The Pull is a beautifully intimate story about memory and water, and I wanted the music to feel both immediate and spontaneous, but also somehow sound like a memory.
Witley Common and The Aeolian Harp
The closing track on Haunts is Witley Common, the voice recorded on a “wet, windy, and frankly rather bleak” day. It’s like a story of time travel where the present dissolves in and out of the past. My aeolian harp seemed like the perfect backdrop for this, with its complex wailing tones driven by wind vibrating its strings. But it’s hard to get it to work consistently if you rely on the wind. Last summer I was melting in the studio, so bought a fan (designed by an absentee Brexiter who shall remain nameless). The fan was multispeed with a remote control, and I found that by varying the speed of the fan blowing across the strings, and recording with contact mics on the back of the harp to eliminate the fan noise, I could control the intensity of the harp manually. I was still too hot, but I had another instrument in my arsenal!
Over the sombre tones of the Aeolian Harp, Marcus plays piano and double bass, Dan Phillips plays violin, and I play guitarviol.
