Wednesday, February 19, 2014

hauntgaze





Momus, "thinking about Scarfolk", along with a bunch of other things and themes, including archival culture and fictitious books

I persist in seeing Scarfolk as the Ride to Ghost Box's My Bloody Valentine



Which must make this chap, Chris Sharp, who records as Concretism, something like the Slowdive or even Chapterhouse of hauntgaze...



from his blurb:

Welcome to my grey world of sinister public information films, dusty archival sounds, Cold War Britain and weeping analogue synths. Not necessarily in that order.

All music, stings and sounds created entirely from scratch, using vintage analogue synths, varispeed tape bouncing, reversing, field recording and self-sampling. I do not use pre-made samples, sounds or loops.

among his output:

 Lost Transmissions: Broadcasts that could have been

 The Science Programme (BBC, early/mid '70s?)
   
    400kV Thames Crossing (from BBC 'The Nation Tonight' package, c. 1970)
   
    Fog (COI public information film, 1982)
    
    History for Schools (BBC, 1978)
    
    A Tour of the Factory
    
    'The Switch' (M&E clip) (ITV 'Drama for Tonight', 1973)
      
    The Mediaeval World (BBC, 1975 - *never made*)
   
    'The Star Children' opening theme (BBC, 1980)
     


among his endorsements:

'Brilliant! Concretism is the perfect accompaniment to ‪Scarfolk‬'  -Richard Littler, Mayor of Scarfolk.

'This guy out-Ghost Boxes Ghost Box. Hauntological heaven.' - -Mike Innes, They Go Boom!!

'Bloody fantastic! On a par with the Ghost Box output at the very least, full of great ideas behind the tracks. I don't know whether to cry, smile, be afraid, or just take note.' -Betacord


Actually enjoyable well-executed stuff, listening to it.... it's just that there's an element of, well, redundancy there.

Still, I suppose at the least it is gratifying that he quite happily tags his output as "Hauntology" c.f churlishness of certain other operators

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