Hauntology Parish Newsletter - Christmas Edition: Moon Wiring Club; Dismal 1970s - Stonecirclesampler + Travis Elborough; Sophie Sleigh-Johnson's Code Damp; William Burns's Ghost of An Idea; Mart Avi + Ajukaja

Very quiet in the parish at the moment. The rotten weather isn't helping. 

On the way home after walking the dog over the fields, coming back along Icknield Way, I did spy a bit of commotion: some new arrivals in the village! An American family moving into Hazeldene, that big house on the corner of Penfold Lane. A grey-haired fellow huffing and puffing great plumes of breath into the cold air  as he lugging into the house what appeared to be an endless succession of boxes crammed with vinyl records, "Don't see many of those these days," I commented cheerily - receiving, for my pains, just a scowl.  I shall return at a less-trying time, with a copy of this newsletter and some mince pies. 

But talking of vinyl records, parish stalwart Ian Hodgson has a new Moon Wiring Club long-player. 

Yes, that's right - the LP has an equine concept. 

There's also a new artwork approach - dropping the usual MWC style for watercolour painting. 

Says Ian, "I wanted to steer away from those rinsed-into-the-ground Folk Horror tropes, so gave the whole album a (very) loose Undead Dressage feeling (lots of movement)" 

Sound-wise, this is reflected in a switch from the marshy, ambient quease vibe to a brisker, starker sound that coats the beats in ample spooky space. "Funky" is not a word that generally springs to mind when you think of Moon Wiring Club - unless in its other meaning of fusty and unventilated. But listening to the crisply syncopated beats of Horses In Our Blood, I kept thinking of The Meters. 

On the Hodgson mood board for this project: The Residents's "Jambalaya", the sound design and production design of spaghetti westerns (in particular the Klaus Kinski Gothic Western And God Said to Cain  and Matalo! ) and acid westerns (like The Hired Hand).  

And there was I thinking the inspiration came from the unfortunate incident at last year's gymkhana. 

There's a whole backstory to the record. 

Another fine offering from MWC - buy it here. 

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Talking of horses....  at the Horse Hospital in London this Sunday afternoon, there will be an event called Dismal 1970s, involving parishioners Stonecirclesampler and Travis Elborough, along with telly scholar Sophie Sleigh-Johnson  and neo-pulp writer Tim Wells. It is described as "an afternoon of festive-ish words, moving pictures and performances dedicated to the decade of Smash instant potato, public information films and Evans the Arrow". More details about times and tickets here.

Stonecirclesampler  - also known as Luke J Murray, the figure behind The Iceman Junglist Kru and various other haunty entities working in mutations of nuum and drill and wotnot -  has produced a "special limited edition Dismal 1970s cassette...  a super short run only available to attendees" orderable with tickets and to be collected at the event.  

Dismal 1970s participant Sophie Sleigh-Johnson has a new book out via Repeater.

Now it was only recently, wasn't it, that I remarked upon the under-acknowledged intersection between hauntology and British comedy. 

Here's a whole book inspecting that area: "a sometimes comedic field report that charts an esoteric code hidden within the twin poles of 1970s sitcoms Rising Damp and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Outlining how past cultural patterns condensate and repeat through technology, time is shown to be a damp condensation seeping through the centuries and out onto the telly. Interspersed with the author’s own photographs, prints, Holsten Pils cans, local newspaper entries and carrier bags, as well as a whole host of other characters, the work seems an antiquarian’s conceit that takes time travel as a metaphoric methodology. This is not media studies; more an allegory of all reality as (tele)visual recorded history, excavating the strata of haunted technology from which the fragile band of code comprising our sense of time is briefly emitted. Drawing connections between incidents of ancient and popular culture, from Mark E. Smith’s lyric— “They say damp records the past”—to Rising Damp’s (meta)physical structure of decay, the book finds damp’s temporal power manifest in everything from alchemy, mysticism, and parish folklore to pulp, Time Team, darts, the local newspaper and, of course, the sitcom. Merging the vast with the parochial, the occult with the comedic, Code: Damp tunes into the weird demands of damp as a time-traveling material at the intersections of comedy, myth and technology, taking all three as serious resources to better (dis)orient the ground we stand on."

Here's a warm endorsement from David Tibet of Current 93 renown: "LUCIFER ON THE BUSES! Code: Damp is one of the strangest books I have read. As well as one of the most evocative, lateral, sidereal... an unspellable jewel."

More endorsements and the opportunity to purchase here

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Another addition to the racks at the local library (note the new reduced opening hours: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and plus Saturday 10 am to noon). Of course you may prefer to support the author by picking up a copy at Book Nook or order directly from Headpress. 

Release irrationale: 

William Burns's Ghost of an Idea: Hauntology, Folk Horror, and the Spectre of Nostalgia examines the use and effect of nostalgia in the Horror and Hauntological realms. It asks why these genres hold such a fascination in popular culture, often inspiring devoted fanbases. From Candyman to The Blair Witch Project, and Dark Shadows to American Horror Story, are the folk horror and found footage phenomena significant artistic responses to political, social, and economic conditions, or simply an aesthetic rebranding of what has come before? How has nostalgia become linked to other concepts (psychogeography, residual haunting) to influence Hauntological music such as Boards of Canada or The Caretaker? What can the ‘urban wyrd’ or faux horror footage tell us about our idealized past? And how will these cultures of nostalgia shape the future?

Combining the author’s analysis with first-hand accounts of fans and creators, Ghost of an Idea offers a critical analysis of our cultural quest to recognize, resurrect, and lay to rest the ghosts of past and present, also summoning up those spectres that may haunt the future.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Seductive Liar, or Are We What We Used to Be?

Chapter 1: Today is Tomorrow’s Yesterday: The Philosophy of Nostalgia

Chapter 2: The Yearning to Return: Folk Horror and Nostalgia

Chapter 3: The Illusionary Precipice: Found Footage and Nostalgia

Chapter 4: The Longing of the Permanently Lost: Franchise Nostalgia

Chapter 5: An Ethereal Composition of Disjointed Memories: Nostalgia as Catalyst for the New

Chapter 6: The Vice of the Aged: Do They Still Got It or Living Off Past Glories?

Chapter 7: The Enemy of Truth: Is Nostalgia Counter-Revolutionary?

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And finally, Estonian exchange student Mart Avi has a new release out, a collaboration with his countryman Ajukaja, bearing the rather sombre title Death of Music.

You can hear it and buy it here.

It's really excellent. To me it has the feel of  a classic "new pop" album -  in the lineage of Lexicon of Love / Sulk / Penthouse and Pavement  - but a new pop album if it had been somehow made after the 1990s. Perhaps in 2001 - the way it folds in rhythmic ideas from hardcore continuum genres and other dance styles of the 1990s - reminds me a bit of Truesteppers, in moments at least. But the songfulness  and the soulfulness - along with the wayward perceptions and intellectual edge - come more from a Scott Walker or Billy Mackenzie sort of place. 

It's a double album too -  a meaty listen that doesn't flag on the quality front.

Release irrationale: 

Certain albums hit like howling bullets at pivotal moments, tearing open the face of music to reveal hidden sonic muscles and fusing them back into something both strangely familiar and yet entirely unrecognisable. We believe this is one of those records.”

The double album Death of Music delivers 16 crooked vocal pops, some ruthless, others unexpectedly disarming. In some songs, Ajukaja & Mart Avi function like a two-headed saurus swinging its spiky tail to shady pop-house smackers. In others, Ajukaja's serene organ licks descend into subterranean caverns, allowing Avi to float to the surface on their wavelengths and turn his voice into billions of extinct moths, enslaved by the moonlight’s pull. There are songs that face destruction and those that seek to prevent it.

One kykeon rap goes, “If you die before you die, then when you die, you don't die!”. Ajukaja & Mart Avi have embraced this notion to create new music that allows them to thrive in the algorithmic wasteland. 13 years in the making, these 66 minutes are packed with lifetimes of truths you didn’t know you needed to know. They are Ajukaja & Mart Avi – two against death.