Dogs Versus Shadows

The Haunted Generation is also a regular column in Fortean Times magazine, rounding up new releases and forthcoming events. From Issue 453, dated January 2025…

THE HAUNTED GENERATION

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

“It felt dark back then,” remembers David A Jaycock. “Dark, cold and detached – closer to Victorian England than to the future. Laundrettes were beacons of warmth and light. Derelict mill roofs could still be walked. Hillards was our local supermarket, and my mum swears she saw a flying saucer hovering above it in the 1960s…”

Those of you already missing the hurly-burly of festive retail might care to check out David’s new album Music For Space Age Shopping. A touching synth homage to the Brutalist shopping arcades of the mid-20th century, it celebrates the utopian ambition of these concrete monuments while also commemorating the transitory weirdness of architecture that – in many British town centres – swiftly disappeared within a couple of decades. For a prime example, take St Peter’s Precinct in David’s native Oldham: opened in 1967 and demolished in 1990.

“Nobody I know speaks well of St Peter’s Precinct,” says David. “People said it was cursed because it was built on a graveyard, but I loved it. I remember pushing my little brother down the massive concrete steps in his pram. Then we’d pay 14p to get the 184 bus to the Arndale Centre in Manchester. Someone there once threw a Santa Claus puppet at us from a moving car and shouted something in French, but I didn’t quite catch it.”

The album is part of what Subexotic Records are pragmatically calling their “Shopping Centre Trilogy”. Completing this splendid triumvirate are Dwell Time, a muzak-influenced collaboration between Xqui and Dogs Versus Shadows, and The Lanes Re-Development by Jonathan Sharp, recording in frankly unconvincing disguise as Carlisle City Council. All three records are affectionate tributes to a vanishing age of retail, and are available from subexoticrecords.bandcamp.com. And if you’re unable to access the website at home, just pop into Rumbelows on a wet Saturday morning and use their Vic-20 when your grandma isn’t looking.

Similarly ruminating upon his 1980s childhood is Durham-based rapper Faithful Johannes. His excellent new album The House At Night deftly combines his own youthful anxieties (ghosts, zombie classmates, car bombs) with those being freshly cultivated by his young daughter. These include a malevolent river spirit called Tony Rossinger, who – according to the song named in his honour – “struck mostly on a Thursday”. Pithy lyrics are accompanied by the slick beats of producer Neocia, and the whole kaboosh is slowly creaking up the stairs at faithfuljohannes.bandcamp.com.

And if those creaky stairs require you to keep the bedside lamp on, surely that’s a perfectly good excuse to read the third instalment of Stagdale. Parts One and Two of Frances Castle’s affecting graphic novel were released in 2019 and 2021 respectively and explored the time-spanning link between Max, a 1930s German refugee brought to England by the kindertransport, and Kathy, a troubled schoolgirl living in the same village in 1975. Part Three features hints of a burgeoning supernatural connection between the two youngsters, and is beautifully illustrated in a way that should touch the hearts of pining Raymond Briggs fans. Follow the battered signposts to thehardytree.bandcamp.com.

Elsewhere, I’ve also been enjoying the The Owl Service, Rupert Lally’s suitably sinister musical tribute to Alan Garner’s classic 1967 novel – it’s waiting to be discovered in the attic at rupertlally.bandcamp.com. I’ve been into space with Kayla Painter’s immersive album Fractures, a strident modular accompaniment to the voyage of NASA’s Europa Clipper probe, now hovering above the frozen oceans of kaylapainter.bandcamp.com. And I love Cate Brooks’ new record Prismatics, a loving recreation of the kind of “corporate electronica” that once soundtracked advertisements for… well, Vic-20 computers. GO TO “belburymusic.greedbag.com” and RUN.

Meanwhile, an extraordinary all-star cast of weirdies have combined talents for surreal spoof radio broadcast Listen Through The Brown Window. Mixing the goofy jingles of vintage local stations with the impenetrable strangeness of vintage BBC schools broadcasts, it’s the brainchild of musician Kev Oyston – previously known for his folklore-influenced work as The Soulless Party. “The concept hit me during a solo drive to Scarborough,” says Kev. “A strange radio show, as overheard through the crackly window of a mysterious analogue numbers station”.

Collaborators include actor (and Vic and Bob sidekick) Vaun Earl Norman, Scarfolk creator Richard Littler, Youtube sensation Sean Reynard, comic book writer Fraser Geesin and musical duo The Twelve Hour Foundation, alongside one-time actual BBC radio presenter Georgy Jamieson. So if yours was the kind of childhood where it seemed entirely feasible that Richard Stilgoe should visit the home of “Bellend Synthesizers” to discover whether their latest models really are powered by beards, then head to Spotify or Mixcloud and simply search for the show’s title. But probably avoid visiting Rumbelows on a wet Saturday morning to ask if you can try out the PolyBellend 800.