The 555-5555 Hauntological Society

#32

I think perhaps this may be outside of hauntology’s remit. One of the main prerequisites for a work of art being open to a hauntological reading is having a sense of time distortion – ‘the past inside the present’ – and/or representing ’nostalgia for lost futures’, either in a literal or a more existential sense. A personal example would be that I either wasn’t alive or a very small child during many of the time periods that hauntologists mine (60s psychedelia, 70s popular modernism, 90s rave etc.) though much of the music still evokes a sense of loss, an eeriness and melancholia… a feeling of being born too late or having had some cultural heritage taken from me.

I think it’s through this that hauntology avoids being mere pastiche and I find it difficult to imagine a ‘new’ utopian sound that uses music from the past to evoke this, not falling into this trap. I’ve not listened to the Jamie xx album that’s been mentioned, though it seems that this is what exactly has happened in this case.

Worth pointing out that I’m not a musician, so I’m speaking purely from the perspective of a writer/theorist (though I’m also neither of those). Interested in hearing opinions from people who are trying to make music in either a hauntological vein or music drawing from the past but avoiding the pitfall of pointless nostalgia.

#33

Great thread! I’m not particularly involved with or knowledgable on hauntology as a topic save for enjoying some of its output, but I will rep endlessly for Mark Fisher’s writing. I’ll also throw in a recommendation for “Ghosts of my Life”, and I don’t think anyone’s mentioned “The Weird and the Eerie” either, which is strongly recommended too.

#34

definitely worth mention Sophia Loizou’s work at this point

#35

New album out today! https://boomkat.com/products/irregular-territories

#36

Also what’s are ppls thoughts on Vaporwave in the Hauntology canon?

#37

Can’t wait to listen to this! Sophia taught me at uni so I owe a lot to her musically

#38

I see vaporwave as being more of a continuation of hypnagogic pop than being strictly a hauntological phenomenon. Though tbh I’m not too keen on vaporwave beyond the odd track and haven’t really explored the genre in great detail… love it’s originators though (opn, ferraro etc.).

#39

Yeah, I guess what I was thinking of couldn’t be called hauntological because it wouldn’t have that vibe of loss. It would be about making those past visions an actual reality in the present — a version of the Situationist living-as-if tactic via music. I’m also thinking of the unrealized celebratory record that Burial once mentioned as a follow-up to Untrue, particularly the last track. (Sort of, without reference to whatever intent that might have had.)

Anyway, a bit off topic…

#40

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.

I’d be interested to learn how anyone younger than 30(ish) views the genre of hauntology/wobbly British electronics. I was saying to someone last week (discussing Gerry Anderson SUPERMARIONATION series’) that there’s a cultural lexicon built up prior to the introduction of satellite/cable TV in the UK, which really took off around 1990. There were a lot of re-runs, and I recall a fair few bleak, dubbed Scandinavian children’s dramas, more than any American imports. With limited choice, we all watched the same things, and those things were creaking, grey and water-damaged.

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’m by no means a scholar on the subject, but it seemed that creatives in post-War Britain pushed and strove to create something unique, which in its weird way spoke to the national character; no longer the head of an Empire, but a kind of injured, bewildered giant grappling with its new future, both excited and terrified.

With the sword of Brexit dangling over us, and the inevitable turmoil, I doubt we’ll see any such renaissance of the public weird; it just isn’t in us any more. We broke that questing curiosity, and sidelined it from the mainstream. Even Doctor Who is all big orchestral scores and glossy production values.

Whatever the next decade holds, it’ll be bleak af, but in a dead-eyed Stepford kinda way. I can’t foresee anyone being nostalgic for the artistic output of the 2020s (mostly because we’ll all be dead in water riots, yay).

#41

that’s kind of devastating, actually.

I’m not sure I totally agree with you, though. Britain is old and creaky and gray and there’s just no getting around it. I’m not sure if you all could totally shake free from that. as I write this, I’m peering out the window at an enormous, sparkling, spotless American metropolis thinking it’s no wonder why our current pop music is superficial, sanitized, impermanent, and empty.

#42

I spent time last year reading through some of Mark Fisher’s old blog posts and discovered this radio series he collaborated on for Resonance FM in 2005: http://www.deeptime.net/blog/?p=863

Real hauntology hours!

#43

Two compilations I would definitely recommend for seekers of hauntology-related themes in electronic music areThe Outer Church and Lessons (both from Front and Follow). The Outer Church in particular was my introduction to a lot of these ideas for me. Both feature Robin the Fog, an artist working in tape manipulation who also performs as Howlround. He did a pretty cool intereview with FACT a few years back: http://www.factmag.com/2016/03/12/robin-the-fog-interview/

I’m also currently working on a podcast called WYRD_SIGNAL with some emphasis on Hauntology - admittedly mostly in the first episode, with the rest looking mainly at the weird and the eerie and tangentially related subjects, but we’ve plans to return to the theme over the next few weeks

#44

I met Robin the Fog a couple of years ago at The Railway in Winchester. Howlround did a wonderful tape-manipulation performance that night, but I was talking to him about the Ghosts Of Bush LP. When I was in school I got to do my work experience at BBC Bush House as one of my brother’s friends was a studio tech there, so snapped up one of the original pressings from Bandcamp. We had a good chat, and it turned out he knew my brother’s friend still, who was pleased to learn how small the world was following an exchange of texts. So that was nice!

Suitably lo-res photos, including the heap of unspooled tape at the end of the performance:


#45

i dont have much to add right now but i wanted to relay this kind of thread is the pivotal reason i joined a site like this, thanks for that

#46

https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/viewFile/378/391

#47

GOOD THREAD

I posted this in the radio section but this is a much better home for it:

Consulate from Perth (one half of Senate) has a show on new Melbourne internet radio station Skylab called I Am Located In A Gas.

If there are any Mark Fisher fans reading, this show has the highest concentration of The Weird And The Eerie, in the full kpunk sense, of anything I’ve listened to in quite a while. Perfectly curated and liberally sprinkled with Consulate’s own productions, which you’ll be into if you enjoy Yally/Raime, Shackleton etc.

Only two eps so far, both here:
http://skylab-radio.com/artist-shows/4UjaOIFJ4QMCOYmuMOE0iY 2

#48

there’s also something that’s massively unsettling about all of Consulate’s output and I couldn’t say exactly what it is. The spectres haunting his work might be some particular ghosts of Western European jouissance - football ultras, violent medieval anarchy, gabber, trench warfare - all observed from the other side of the world, at great physical remove but relative cultural proximity.
Case in point: listen to this track and then google its name

#49

#50

I have no idea where to put this but in this thread - David Rudnick and Clouds imagine a terrifying, violent rave-dystopia 400 years in the future in the remains of Glasgow. Incredible work of design and worldbuilding, wowowow
http://neurealm.net/

What frequencies you pumping atm
#51

didn’t want to start a whole New Release discussion/thread so posting this here. really dig Fonolith’s output (Neil Scrivin/Phono Ghosts/Meatbingo) and would probably label this stuff “hauntological”.