LTW Hauntology: Suggestions for Further Exploration

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Music

Longer form pieces and rabbit holes for the brave or curious.

Daphne Oram / BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Daphne Oram was an early electronic musician and co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. She left the BBC to pursue her own Oramics project. Oramics involved the production of sound/music from hand drawn images on 35mm film stock.

See: The Oramics Machine

It's Gonna Rain - Steve Reich (1965) (from Early Works 1987)

Looped tape work where two loops are played together and move out of sync creating the phase shifting which would go on to characterise Reich's work. The recording features "a fiery Pentecostal preacher called Brother Walter [who] was preaching an apocalyptic outdoor sermon about The Flood. "It’s gonna rain... for 40 days and for 40 nights..." and so on. Reich noticed at once the melody in Brother Walter’s voice - the phrase "It’s gonna rain" was on a major third, somewhere between D and E flat moving to somewhere between F sharp and G." The piece is haunted by "... the apocalyptic atmosphere of the times. Americans were still shaken by the Cuban Missile crisis, when the world was brought to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. "We had the end of the world still hanging over our heads," Reich said, "if not by water, then by fire."" [quoted text from Our Classical Century: Steve Reich: It's Gonna Rain, BBC, 2018]

William Basinski

Shortwavemusic (1998): Bandcamp
"Using fragments of muzak recorded from the radio, Basinski chopped, re-pitched and looped familiar elements to procure the haunting waves of sound on the record and then draped them in a gown of shortwave static, humming and hissing in accompaniment. It is almost impossible to comprehend that Basinski was recording this stuff back in 1982, it still sounds prophetic, the delicate and sentimental ghost-like melodies and the sheets of echoing fizzing and buzzing." [from boomkat product review]
The Disintegration Loops I-IV (2002-2003)
- I (2002): Bandcamp
- II (2003): Bandcamp
- III (2003): Bandcamp
- IV (2003): Bandcamp
  "The albums comprise tape loop recordings played for extended time, with noise and cracks increasing as the tape deteriorated. Basinski discovered the effect while attempting to transfer his earlier recordings to digital format. The completion of the recording coincided with the 9/11 attacks, which Basinski witnessed from his rooftop in Brooklyn; the artwork features Basinski's footage of the New York City skyline in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse." [from Wikipedia entry]
  "From its 20-year gestation period to its infamously fateful completion, The Disintegration Loops is one of the most powerful manifestations of the inevitable cycle of life ever committed to tape, even as it documents the inevitable decay of all that is committed to tape. The very passage of time is its most effective instrument." [from album description on Bandcamp page]
The River (2002): Bandcamp
"Growing up in the 70's, with a love for the lush sound of the Mellotron, but not having the pocketbook to own one, I decided to try to create my own. I had heard that the sounds were recorded on tape loops, so I began recording small bits of lush strings from intros and interludes in muzak songs to use as my ›keys‹. The aspect of pulling all the sounds from the airwaves, to create something from nothing, fascinated me." - William Basinski [from album description on Bandcamp page]

Salt Marie Celeste - Nurse with Wound (from Salt Marie Celeste 2003)

"A queasy hour of tipping, tilting sounds. Surges of digital static and spray mimic wave motion while underlying tones drive the piece forward to its dénouement. The chosen title, of course, influences the listening experience – it’s impossible not to reach for images of sundered timbers and throttling storms. Stapleton and Colin Potter lace the underlying chords with occasional creaks, putters and scrapes all of which walk across the speakers as if untethered objects were waving in the wind, or falling past. Soon though these distractions drop away and one is left with the thought of an empty vessel crashing onward without a hand at the tiller. The artistry comes from making something created by human hands sound like the motion of nature, as if everything caught here is unconscious when the piece can only have been the result of intense control, know-how and focused intent." [from An Introduction to Nurse With Wound in 10 Records by Nick Soulsby, The Vinyl Factory, March 2016]

The Sinking of the Titanic (1969-) - Gavin Bryars (with Philip Jeck & Alter Ego) (2007)

"The Sinking Of The Titanic was always about loss, about the voices of the dead and the persistence of sound in water. (The piece is based around the story that the Titanic’s band played the hymn ‘Autumn’ as the ship sank; Bryars uses all kinds of ‘echo and deflection phenomena’ to simulate a slow descent to the sea bed.) It was the recent recording of The Sinking Of The Titanic – made by Bryars, Italian ensemble Alter Ego and Philip Jeck in 2005, and released by Touch in 2007 – that synchronized Bryars’ composition with the broken temporality of this decade. Specifically, it was the involvement of Jeck that brought the work in to tune with what some of us have been calling the ‘hauntological‘ tendency in this decade’s music." [from a concert review by Mark Fisher, Frieze, May 2009]

À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu - Akira Rabelais (2021)

Similar to The Caretaker's Haunted Ballroom trilogy of releases, this later release from Akira Rabelais takes its inspiration from the works of Proust and the music available in his lifetime. "The album is based around the novels by Proust, Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, and is predicated on a few threads … The music of the novels, the music Proust (an avid music collector) had in his head and in his collection, the anthems of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. What music one might hear getting lost in Paris of the Belle Époque? The content includes twenty six composers and a Dixieland jazz band: Bartók, Bellini, Berg, Brahms, Caccini, Chausson, Chopin, Debussy, Delibes, Donizetti, Franck, Hahn, Jungmann, Louisiana Five, Lully, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Satie, Schoenberg, Schubert, Schumann, Scriabin, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Wagner and Weber." [from Akira Rabelais blog post 6/10/22]

The Caretaker partial discography - available releases on Bandcamp

The Haunted Ballroom Trilogy:

Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom (1999): Bandcamp
A Stairway to the Stars (2001): Bandcamp
We'll All Go Riding on a Rainbow (2003): Bandcamp

Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia (2006): Bandcamp
4 hours of music, split over six CDs, exploring memory loss. The sounds on the album are heavily processed samples from The Magic of Mantovani box set. “I have always been fascinated by memory and it’s recall, especially where sound is concerned,” says James Kirby, aka The Caretaker, from his current base in Berlin. “Some things we remember easily and others we never seem to grasp. That idea was developed more on the box set I did [Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, 2006], which was based around a specific form of amnesia where sufferers can remember things from the past but are unable to remember new things. To recreate that in sound was a challenge that I relished, really. I realised the only way was to make a disorientating set with very few reference points. Fragments of melody breaking out of this monotonous tone and audio quagmire. Even if you listen over and over to all the songs, you still can’t remember when these melodies will come in. You have no favourite tracks, it’s like a dream you are trying to remember. Certain things are clear but the details are still buried and distant.” [from an interview with Leyland Kirby by Mark Fisher, The Wire, Issue 304]

An Empty Bliss Beyond this World (2011): Bandcamp
"Sourced from a mysterious collection of 78s, these vague snippets of archaic sonics reflect the ability of Alzheimers patients to recall the songs of their past, and with them recollections of places, people, moods and sensations." [from album description on Bandcamp page]

Everywhere at the End of Time (2016-2019): Bandcamp.
6 hours of music split over 7 CDs, portraying the progression of Alzheimer's disease. “I think I’m coming to the end of The Caretaker. I just can’t see where I can take it after this. My final idea has been to give the whole project dementia. Originally I was going to make one recording and take it down into the abyss over a period of three years. So the idea would have been to do one recording and degrade it, to process it down so you would get a continuation from the start to the end point. But then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be better to give the whole project dementia?” That then forces me to think, “Well, what do I remember from the project myself?” Because it’s nearly 20 years since I started making the first record. And then I developed this idea of doing six releases each with a gap of six months between each one to give a sense of time passing.” [from an interview with Leyland Kirby by John Doran, The Quietus, September 2016]

Record Labels

These record labels are practitioners of the whole hauntology aesthetic:

Ghost Box: https://ghostbox.co.uk/
Finders Keepers: https://finderskeepersrecords.bandcamp.com/
Mordant Music: https://mordantmusic.bandcamp.com/

These record labels are more general electronic music labels but do have a number of artists and releases on their rosters that fit the aesthetic:

Castles in Space: https://castlesinspace.bandcamp.com/
Subexotic: https://subexoticrecords.bandcamp.com/

Books

Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures - Mark Fisher, Zero Books (2014)

The English Heretic Collection: Ritual Histories, Magickal Geography - Andy Sharp, Repeater Books (2020)

Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain - Matthew Green, Faber & Faber (2022)

Web Sites

The National Archives: Public Information Films
UK public information films are another touchstone for many hauntological artists. Many combine cartoon graphics with serious messages or use horror tropes to convey their messages. Here is a short list of examples from the early 1970s:

Last modified: Monday, 31 October 2022, 9:17 AM