The Haunted Generation In The Fortean Times (Issue 450)

The Haunted Generation is also a regular column in Fortean Times magazine, rounding up new releases and forthcoming events. From Issue 450, dated November 2024…

THE HAUNTED GENERATION

Bob Fischer rounds up the latest news from the parallel worlds of popular hauntology

“A botanist working in a remote wood dismisses what she believes to be superstitions, but as night falls she is led off track by a will-o’-the-wisp,” explains US musician Timmi Meskers. “She encounters a strange figure who offers to help find the flower she pursues, before leading her through a ring of mushrooms to a woodland banquet…”

Timmi is describing the storyline of Night Blooming Flowers, a stunning new album recorded under her regular nom-de-plume Garden Gate, in collaboration with mischievous Glaswegian tape looper Drew Mulholland. Combining groovy vintage horror trappings with evocative electronica, the album is a melodic descent into the world of fairy folklore. “I was over the moon to get a message from Drew expressing his interest in a collaboration,” says Timmi. “I’ve been a fan of his work since I was a student, and the album wouldn’t exist without his incredible sonic contributions.”

The inspiration for the botanist’s plight, meanwhile, came from Emma Wilby’s 2005 book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits. “The pieces on the record were sequenced to align with the witch trial records presented in the book,” says Timmi. “It argues that there are parallels between British fairy lore and the shamanic experience: moving between ordinary and non-ordinary reality. During a time of hardship, the experiencer encounters a strange figure who arrives through a physically impossible natural feature – a crack in a stone or a hole in a tree – and takes them to another world. A world where they may be required to pledge allegiance to a kind of fairy king or queen”. Interested in taking the pledge yourself? Slip between dimensions to gardengate.bandcamp.com.

Remaining (just) on this side of ordinary reality, genial Brummie dismantler Brian Duffy has spent the last two decades coaxing splendid noises from battered Speak & Spell machines as lead conductor of the Modified Toy Orchestra. But his excellent new solo album Instead of Faint Spirit sees him wangling instead with a 1975 System 100 synthesizer. Fed, of course, through a broken CB Radio. Oh, and an ancient Telefunken reel-to-reel tape machine. It’s a beautifully organic collection, and standout track ‘Wind On Combe Gibbett’ was inspired by a visit Brian once made to this macabre 17th century monument with his friend Trish Keenan – the late, great singer with Broadcast, to whom the album is dedicated. Head to buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com.

And if you’re suitably inspired, I’d always recommend checking out Broadcast’s extraordinary back catalogue, too – although co-founder James Cargill has now declared an end to the band with the poignant release of Distant Call. A collection of raw home demos recorded by James and Trish between 2000 and 2006, it’s a touching and intimate full stop on a peerless body of work. Find a copy at broadcast.bandcamp.com.

Perhaps the spiritual successors to Broadcast’s psychedelic crown are The Soundcarriers, whose fifth album Through Other Reflections is a charming homage to an era when discarded Mellotrons were frequently worshipped by fauns in sun-dappled woodland clearings. It’s pitched perfectly in the headspace between Traffic and Syd Barrett, with frontwoman Leonore Wheatley a force of delightfully wayward nature. It can be found tangled amongst the undergrowth at the-soundcarriers.bandcamp.com. But if you’re still hankering for “black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud and powered by queer enchantment”, then look no further than the self-titled debut album of Leeds-based trio Tristwch Y Fenywod. This zither-powerered Welsh language exploration of myth and magic conjures up the spectres of Dead Can Dance and The Cocteau Twins, and is currently manifesting at night-school.bandcamp.com.

Other slices of strangeness wafting across my desk: Other Voices is the work of The Sheffield Paranormal Research Group, taking “audio emanations from the unknown” (apparently collected during the eldritch experiments of this shadowy South Yorkshire collective) and weaving them into soundscapes created by the equally mysterious Spongeboy. It’s bleeding through the ether at spongeboy.bandcamp.com.

And I’m equally taken with Horn Dancing, a collection of horror film soundtracks played sublimely on classical guitar by the nimble fingers of Mike Fowler. Adapting music from the likes of Blood on Satan’s Claw and the big-screen 1973 version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Mike has created a darkly beautiful album. Crack open the Butterkist popcorn at mikefowler.bandcamp.com.

Meanwhile, it’s always a treat to receive a new missive from Keith Seatman, an impish fairy being long since resident in a non-ordinary reality of his own creation. Keith’s terrific new album A Skip and a Song To See Us Along is Edwardian psychedelia riddled with memories of haunted fairgrounds and fragmented nursery rhymes, a world where Wurlitzer organs are played by skeletons in top hats and blank-faced dolls join spindly fingers around faded ouija boards. “It’s basically ten tunes to confuse and befuddle,” says Keith. “Get up, tap your fingers and click your toes… ” Head to keithseatman.bandcamp.com and grab a copy before it vanishes back through a hole in a tree.