Howling and Harrowing in the North

It’s been a lot of fun playing gigs with Layla since our album, Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing) was released back in March. Thank you to everyone who invited us to play and all those who said very kind things to us after shows. Thanks also to Ben Goldberg at Ba Da Bing! for the gentle push in this direction. I should also mention that WE FINALLY HAVE A WEBSITE!

Hawthonn at Tor Fest (July 21, Hebden Bridge Trades Club). Photo: Andy Jarvis.

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Capturing the Red Goddess

Although we finished recording Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing) in December 2016, the process of getting the album released was beset by a variety of delays which, ultimately, made the end result a lot better. One delay was getting the best possible lathe cut and pressing, rejecting a number of test presses along the way. In this respect, Paul Gold at Salt Mastering did brilliantly – the final pressing sounds excellent: no noise, wide dynamic range, great clarity – one couldn’t ask for more… Apparently Ba Da Bing! had an office full of interns listening to the test presses with notepads in their hands, eagerly listening out for any pops or hisses…

The other thing that took an inordinately long time was coming up with the cover art…

 

Manifestations: Red Goddess and Hexadic III

Hawthonn is the real deal. Equally adept at transcribing crow calls
into musical scales as they are at creating horizon melting
atmospheres, Red Goddess raises the bar for musicians interested in
composing straight from the creative imagination. For fans of Jocelyn
Godwin, John Dee and Folk Horror as much as the darker spectrum of
British music, this is a record of staggering breadth.

– Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance)

I am pleased to say that we can finally announce the new Hawthonn album, Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing), which will be released on 23rd of March on Ba Da Bing! Records. We premiered ‘Eden’, the first single, on The Quietus last week – you can read more about the track there, or listen below.

Pre-orders, and more info on the album, can be found here! For those in the UK/EU, Layla and I will handle the postage in order to cut out the prohibitive transatlantic shipping fees. If you are interested in ordering a copy, email us at hawthonnband@gmail.com. Prices are £20 LP and £10 CD, plus P&P (LP: £4.50 UK/£7.20 EU; CD: £2.50 UK/£4.50 EU). You can also order direct from us via Bandcamp!

The LP also comes in a burlap-textured sleeve (- like the first pressing of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures! -) and has an insert with a short essay thereon. Norman Records, Piccadilly Records and many others will be also carrying the album!

Three Witches and a Celestial Wain

Since posting the 22-minute Dolente…Dolore back in July, this blog has been rather quiet. Of course – much has been going on behind the scenes: I’m pleased to say that 2018 is looking quite exciting – there will be a new Hawthonn album at the start of the year (vinyl, CD and digital: pre-orders should hopefully be announced in a few weeks!), and I have a solo track on a brilliant compilation album that should be released at around the same time.

Furthermore, I’m finishing off a book manuscript for one of my favourite occult publishers. I’m also doing plenty of academic work: a paper on Coil, Killing Joke and Kenneth Grant for Cambridge University Press’ Popular Music Journal (manuscript due in 2018, but not published til 2019!) AND working on my PhD thesis on esoteric discourse and musical creativity! Oh, and I also wrote a short piece for the spring 2018 issue of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic’s Enquiring Eye magazine, the first issue of which was excellent. 

Sustain//Decay

I am pleased to say that I have an article published in Void Front Press’ new collection Sustain//Decay. Edited by Owen Coggins (Open University) and James Harris, this 289-page collection brings together writings on drone music and mysticism by a diverse range of authors, amongst them Kristina Wolfe, Kim Cascone, Eyvind Kang, J.-P. Caron and Drone Box representing perhaps the speculative and luminescent side of drone mysticism, while Coggins, Harris, Absentology (Mark Horvath & Adam Lovasz), Steven Shakespeare, Joseph Norman and others explore the heavier, doomier side: rounding off the collection with an interview with Sunn O)))’s Atilla Csihar.

My piece is titled Inner-Sense and Experience: Drone Music, Esotericism and the Hieroeidetic Field, and looks at the role of the esoteric imagination the production of drone music. It develops Arthur Verluis’ concept of the hieroeidetic, which can be described as the imaginative space that exists between artist/audience and the art object:

Catching up…

Things have been unspeakably busy for the last few months! Doing a PhD part-time, alongside teaching and working on the new Hawthonn album, provisionally entitled Flood, has meant the blog has lapsed a bit. However, I hope to write in some detail over the Christmas break about on of my recent obsessions: the music of Kristina Wolfe.

Talking and Exhibiting

I hope the following might provide some distraction while my beloved country tears itself apart. At present I’m for embracing cosmic anarchy and seeking solace in the transcendent: the only territory impervious to toxic political manoeuvring!

Anyway, plenty of news: Hawthonn’s first interview was published in The Quietus. We must thank Russell Cuzner for concisely editing what was quite a long and far-ranging conversation.

… of course, this was coincident with the release of our second album, Sea-Spiral Spirit, on Reverb Worship. The physical edition is now sold out (although there will hopefully be second edition), although the digital edition is still available and includes a 15-minute bonus track.

Merlin, Mellotrons, and the Poetry of Consciousness

Recently, Layla mentioned how much she enjoyed the mellotron that permeates many of Julian Cope’s albums and live performances. One source suggests that this may also be same mellotron that is played by Thighpaulsandra on a number of Coil albums – certainly the mellotron is used to excellent effect on Astral Disaster, particularly on the visionary Sea Priestess:

This prompted us to revisit an idea that came up while we were working on the first Hawthonn album. Obviously the album explored themes surrounding Jhonn Balance’s resting place at Bassenthwaite, and the symbol of the hawthorn tree was particularly important. While exploring associations with the hawthorn, S.: of the Psychogeographical Commission mentioned that there was a legendary connection with Merlin.

Field Studies & Search Ensembles

Some recent bits of news:

Andy Paciorek, illustrator and instigator of the Folk Horror Revival forum, has recently edited a 498-page book of writing and interviews around the idea of ‘folk horror’.

Contributors include Adam Scovell, John Coulthart (writing on David Rudkin), Sharron Kraus, Gary Lachman (on WIlson’s The Outsider, and also interviewed himself), Grey Malkin, Chris Lambert, and more. There are also interviews with Kim Newman, Philip Pullman, Drew Mulholland… so, if you like pagan things, landscapes, the uncanny et al, take a look. It’s quite cheap and any profits will be donated to environmental, wildlife and community projects undertaken by The Wildlife Trusts!

I have a piece included called The Haunted Fields of England: Diabolical Landscapes and the Genii Locorum, which uses the idea of the diabolisation of pagan landscape features to trace the development of the genius loci from semi-benevolent tutelar daimons of Antiquity, to the ghouls and monsters of the Anglo-Saxon imagination and the treasure-guarding demons of Medieval and Tudor magic!

You can order Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies here.

Sorathic Manifestation & Reflections on Hawthonn

 

The various Hexadic pieces written over the last couple of months have been collected together, edited, sequenced and mastered under the title Sorath, which is available to stream and download at Bandcamp on a £3 or more basis. Sorath also includes two additional pieces: Pastorale with Interleaved Progressions and Integral Hexady – thanks to Jesse Jarnow for unexpectedly playing the former of these on his WFMU show!

-=-

Hawthonn’s success as a conceptual album can be seen in its eerie evocation of Coil’s underlying themes – ghostly sketches of possibility emerge from these sonic landscapes, a peculiar and specific spirit hovers over the work. Using what can in some sense be described as musical necromancy the Legards have created a series of sound evocations that allow the listener to embark on a mythopoetic voyage beyond the waking world.

Hawthonn has also provoked some encouraging reactions. David Metcalfe, quoted above, has written an incredible reflection on engaging with the album during a rural retreat over at Modern Mythology. This piece was very interesting and timely, since a colleague questioned me after my paper at The Alchemical Landscape about how people react to my (- and now our -) music. I confess that I rather foundered on this question: having been so concentrated on the creative process during the writing of my paper, and in general, I’ve never really sought out narratives from people who have encountered a deeper experience with it – the kind of experiences that resonate with the ‘imaginal’ aspects of the work itself. Unbidden, David has filled in this missing piece of the jigsaw, and writes beautifully about the relationship between the album, the journal and the making of the work, and his own experience. He has also illuminated some pieces of hawthorn-lore that we were unaware of, and makes the connections between the project and Coil’s Jhonn Balance more explicit. Read the article here.

Photo by David Metcalfe.

At The Active Listener, Grey Malkin also wrote very positively about the project, concluding that:

Hawthonn is a unique and visionary piece of music that is clearly a labour of love and is utterly heartfelt. It speaks of Balance himself and of his loss. It also evokes a rural unease and a true sense of nature at its most wild and unknowable. You need this album; this is an incredible and special work that needs to be heard and experienced.

The limited digital edition of 72 copies, including the album, with additional 32-page journal and 80+ minutes of bonus music is still available here.