The 555-5555 Hauntological Society

#1

Welcome! Like the spectre of Marx, music associated with hauntology continues to enjoy a thriving (un)life. Despite the term being over ten years old, great music that can be understood in hauntological terms is still being made; Ghost Box is still going strong, the label Patterned Air started only two years ago and Children of Alice released their debut last year.

For those of you yet to come across the term, I suggest reading/listening to this blog post by Adam Harper that does a brilliant job of outlining the thesis of what hauntology is and it’s origin, while also giving examples of hauntology in music and art:

There are also these epochal pieces by Simon Reynolds and the late Mark Fisher which were important in establishing the term:


http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007230.html

Starting tomorrow, I plan on updating this post with lists of artists, albums, resources etc. Feel free to recommend anything you feel worthy of inclusion and join the discussion!

EDIT: here’s list for anyone uniniated in audio hauntology, a very good selection of albums/artists (I didn’t compile it):

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/TheScientist/rym_ultimate_box_set__hauntology/

Only album/artist not mentioned on this list I’d add is On Land by Brian Eno. The sleevenotes alone pre-empt hauntology by a good twenty years.

Edit: Be sure to also check out William basinski, especially his essential disintegration loops series.

NOTE TO MODS: I posted this in ‘Music General’ as I felt that most of the art/media etc. being released currently that gets labelled as hauntological is predominately music. However, there probably will be times when art, film and literature are discussed. Feel free to move this thread to ‘Everything Else’ if you deem it necessary.

#2

Adam is a fantastic writer. thanks for sharing.

#3

Following this! To point out the obvious, for those not familiar with hauntology I’d recommend Mark Fisher’s blogposts (one of which blank already posted), which are bundled in a lovely booked called ‘Ghosts of my Life’.

#4

@criminiminal yer Adam’s fab. Shame he doesn’t write as often as he used to, though that’s understandable given his work as an academic. His radio show on RBMA is great, a continuing charting of underground weirdness.

@fien YES I cannot recommend that book (as well as many of his blog posts) enough. The closest thing I have to a bible for a variety of reasons… Not really much in the way of books chronicling hauntology. It’s mentioned in Simon Reynolds’ Retromania, which is where I first discovered the term. HOWEVER this book just came out which looks very interesting indeed, with a seal of approval from Reynolds himself:

Grabbing it as soon as I’ve finished my current reading backlog!

#5

Oh wow, thanks for the tip, will have to check that out! :slight_smile: If you’re interested in hauntology you may also be interested in Marc Augé’s ‘Non-Places’, which is more about the dissolving of recognisable/characteristic space, rather than time. Doesn’t touch upon hauntology, but I still think it’s somewhat related. https://www.amazon.com/Non-Places-Introduction-Supermodernity-Marc-Auge/dp/1844673111

#6

Do you know if that ‘A Year In The Country’ book is available anywhere other than Amazon? Amazon doesn’t deliver to the Netherlands unfortunately

#7

Really love this recent tape

#8

This book looks class! I see there’s some accompanying mixes on mixcloud as well: https://www.mixcloud.com/Wyrd_Kalendar/spectral-fields-chapters-1-13/

I’d recommend Mark Fischer’s Ghosts of My Life to anyone who hasn’t read it and is interested in hauntology.

#9

@fien yer I’ve definitely seen that term crop up in Fisher’s writing. Will add the book to my list!

Unfortunately it’s sold out at the only two other places I’m aware that it was available… only advice would be to try and contact the author.

@adnhnrt @deprecate these both look great guys, will check em out when I get a chance!

#10

The name of the piece escapes me but recently read a great Mark Fisher write up on how afro-futurism is ultimately hauntological, will link here when I find it. Please keep the literature suggestions coming though! Hauntology is one of my fave topics to read about when pretending to be busy at work

#11

YES YES YES YES TO THIS THREAD.

Studied this tirelessly at university. RIP Mark Fisher.

Also shouts to labels like Ghost Box and obv stuff by The Caretaker!

#12

Anyone got any other recommendations on music/labels in this field?, i feel i’ve fallen off track lately. Needless to say Boards Of Canada got me into this stuff. I love music, particularly english music with this heritage of folk lore and the occult. Folk Lore Tapes is an awesome label, the quality of the audio/visual stuff they do is incredddddible.

#13

I have to admit that for an American/ersatz anglophile such as myself, the appeal of hauntology (particularly the strain that Folklore Tapes, Dead-Cert Entertainment, Ghost Box, Mordant Music and others trade in) is especially potent.

does anyone have any working theories as to why hauntology’s representation in the arts is so uniquely and overwhelmingly British?

#14

It’s about the British welfare state that never was.

Also check Scarfolk Council.

#15

@criminiminal what @chava has said, the destruction of the welfare state through the continuation of neo-liberalist policies which began with thatcher in the 80s… as if we are being haunted by a socialist future that never happened.

Also a lot of the influences/reference points etc. come from British media in the late 60s and the 70s, a golden era for what Fisher describes as popular modernism: avant garde soundtracks on kids TV shows etc. It also carry’s with it a certain autodidactic connotation, that high culture was avaliable to and being contributed to by the working classes. Something that is increasingly absent today.

@E_TCH personal highlights from the past couple of years include everything on the patterned air label as well as the toitoitoi and focus group albums from ghost box last year. The Children of Alice album is great too, a super group consisting of James Cargill from broadcast, Roj Stevens and Julian House. Moon wiring club is also continuing to put out fab music, though I haven’t listened to his latest couple of releases yet.

Oh and the recent album from beautify junkyard is lurvvvly and I’ll definitely have to more to say about it soon!

#16

@blank @chava I think that phases of intense artistic activity in the face of political unrest will be familiar to many modern cultures (e.g. counter-culturalists hallucinating an enlightened, peaceful America after JFK, Detroiters fetishizing automation and order amidst the chaos of a crumbling economic infrastructure), but the artistic stockpiles following these periods aren’t always understood as hauntological in nature.

curious why a specific (i.e. British) aesthetic is most commonly applied to hauntological output.

#17

@criminiminal the USA doesn’t have a particularly strong socialist history though, does it?

Hauntology, as a concept, was first coined by the philosopher derrida in his book the spectre of Marx… This longing for a lost utopia is central to the concept.

Are you familiar with hypnagogic pop? This is often considered the NA equivalent of hauntology.

#18

Fair warning, I’m going to flag any posts which mention Public fucking Service fucking Broadcasting as hate speech.

In terms of why the UK’s such a hotbed for this stuff, I think the underlying reason as others have mentioned is that abolition of the welfare state which existed pre-Thatcher. Both in the sense of a lost future, but also because that memory lines up very neatly with the nostalgia everyone feels for their childhood: seeing things pre-1979 as an entirely different time, both Edenic and a bit sinister.

There’s also an aesthetic parallel though, with things like the Radiophonic Workshop, public information films, etc: a really rich vein of publicly-funded, publicly-minded art which were really experimental in form while being familial / civic in intent. I think quite a lot of the Ghost Box stuff is not only an attempt to build on the idea of a UK which held fast to the post-war social contract, but imagining those specific types of artwork continuing.

#19

Also, apologies for the self-promo but I did a record a couple of years ago which attempted to deal with some of these same ideas from a slightly different perspective (using club music rather than folk as the template, and evoking urban rather than rural spaces):

#20

well, yes and no, I guess. suffice it to say that the US and the UK are so vastly different it isn’t really fair to compare. but, right, thank you for bringing up hypnagogic pop – you are correct that this movement captured so much of the elusive post-modern essence of American yesteryear.