“Ghosts of Electricity” is an experimental/soundscapes/ambient/hauntronica collaboration between Dean Richards (Disturbed Earth, Whirlywirld, Equal Local) and Michael Plater (solo artist, GhostShips, Northern Lighthouse Board, Cornish Wreckers). Their second album, “The Guildford Tree” is an aural exploration of landscape and memory, inspired by the myths, folklore, legends, history and countryside around their homes in Guildford, Victoria and Bodmin, Cornwall. The album also features crucial contributions from Tony Millman (Cornish Wreckers, Tony Millman Band) on piano. This is the first release of a planned two volume set.
The Fabled Isle - the tentative first steps on the shore of a new land. The tree line just beyond the low dunes. An eerie and unfamiliar animal cry. A separate launch for the sick. Smallpox victims draped in woolen blankets cough as they are herded through the shallows. Through the dunes, weaving their way warily between the tussocked grass come the first of the curious natives. Their eyes wide and clean white with large black pupils. We ask them for help with our sick crew members. We have already been inoculated. It won't take long. The riches of this new land will soon be ours. I have already spied my concubine. My dreams spiral wide and high as the sky.
The Attic Dolls - Usurpers carouse in the local tavern. They have taken the manor on the hill as HQ. They spill down into the village at night for spoils and dissipation. They sport huge erections beneath their breeches. They cavort Bruegelesque. They ribaldly riff Caravaggioesque. They pantomime in tennis gear at the bar. They disdain Davidesque. They smash skulls with enormous glass bottomed pewter tankards. They syphilize humanity to the horizon Tudoresque. They get in petticoats and face powder and maquillage and paper fans and scream hideously at each other. They are high on ether. They bay for a supper of human flesh which they themselves have prepared and presented to the cook. The cook demurs. He is dragged from the galley and thrown from the public house into the pitch black night where he falls sobbing into the putrid smelling icy mud.
The Haunted Dance Hall - the hiss of unfiltered static fills the wood lined dance hall. You can hear a pin drop. Outside in the distance the skaters land tricks around an abandoned pool. The pipe organ swells. It howls round. It builds and falls. The sound is restless. The hall indifferent, immutable. The stasis of the hall gives reflection and life to the unbridled writhing of the sound waves. The dead surface of the hall plays the drama of life. You are the only one listening.
Jackson's Hill - Welcome to church. A pipe organ. Chords building. Searching for focus, wandering in and out of resolution. Like all music searching for a moment when aural converts to visceral, where identity blurs behind tears, outlines are lost, interior and exterior flow together. I nibbled my chips in my room. I was monastic. The Guildford Tree emits by transpiration the same volume of water as a firetruck at full blast 24 hours a day. It draws it up through the roots and converts it into invisible molecules at a profound rate. It has been there for hundreds of years. You are but a flicker, a blur between the left and right speakers, an image resolved briefly then gone.
The Lost Crew of the Zebrina - I hear the sound of oars and rigging distorted into freight cars clanging. Spectral residues drifting sideways through time. An organ rises slowly. I am scared. I log goosebumps. The fabric is torn now. Salt spray and Tardis creaks. Sharks trail the ship. Raptors circle the wagons. The canvas of the sky is ripped. Baby-blue and gold filaments hang in the cloistered air. I eat my flake on a piece of paper.
The Mooncusser's Dirty Work - The Lost Crew inverts. It works in reverse. The crew are drawn backwards through the birth canal of destiny and remade undead. They return home. The dock is deserted. The townsfolk pay them little heed. Their families don't recognise them. They barely acknowledge their presence. This recorporealisation has lost mass in the process. The crew hurry back down to the dock to re-board the corpse vessel but it has drifted from its moorings and wanders towards the horizon. The Event horizon. As the ship approaches the edge of a black hole time slows until it appears stationary for an infinity. As it approaches the speed of light the lives the villagers accelerate. They go through the movements of their daily routines at ever increasing speed until they dissolve in a blur of infinitely fast gestures, ageing rapidly and then deliquescing into the abyss of time. The crew look on helplessly and aghast as everyone they have ever loved dies under their gaze, as if their eyes are deaths rays vaporising everything they look upon. Nothing but radio silence remains.
St Martin's Land – A land of silent remains. Flowers dip and flutter in an invisible, undetectable wind like a silent movie. Leaves stir on the branches and in drifts along the ground but they make no sound. Exposed skin does not feel the chill breeze. It ripples through the fur of a pine marten. A bell swings in slow motion. The vibrations from its toll can be felt in the tissues but nothing is sensible to the ear. It is the morphine. It is a world underwater, beneath the oceans waves. It pulls a handful of your hair. It twists your body mercilessly. You cannot breathe but you do not need air. You cannot resist but you feel no pain. You are completely plastic. Your are stretched into one long twisted hank. You begin to vibrate. Hundreds of times per second. Water courses through you. You are a strand of cellulose inside the Guildford Tree. A single cell in a multicellular and dispassionate being. You no longer move through life. Life moves through you.
Cannards Grave - is full of activity! Listen to the enthusiasm of the bugs! Ants with their wings folded poking about. Stop it! I'm ticklish! The cicadas are stirring. They are emerging. They are screaming. They drown out the pipe organ. They squeal urgently to mate before they die. Their dormancy so long their waking chance so brief. Are we any different? We are all just links in a chain. We won't be back here again. I don't even recall being here at all. It was so brief and so long ago. The wizard draws back his cloak to reveal a view of the night sky studded with stars. I look down through a crack in the tomb to see the sky reflected in a pool of water spun back and forth with cobwebs and twinkling lights.
(Tony Millman)
"Hauntingly atmospheric...full of ghostly and beautifully dark ethereal sounds," (Dark Moments)
There is a doomy, smog covered feeling of the opener “The Fabled Isle,” which is built around symphonic like synth lines with the colour mostly sucked out of them, producing a piece which creates a thick atmosphere...Rather than just being dark and gloomy the music brings out their cinematic side, making the music feel that it is more about atmosphere than anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if either Richards or Plater are big fans of underground horror/sci-fi and B movies," (Drifting, Almost Falling)
U.K based Australian noir/experimental singer/songwriter. Solo artist, Northern Lighthouse Board, Ghosts of Electricity,
Cornish Wreckers & various other incarnations and incantations
"Beautiful and timeless...Music that breaks your heart,” (Peek-a-Boo, Belgium)
"One of the most absorbing and arresting players around."
(B-Side Magazine)
Stylophone spooktronica from my side project The Northern Lighthouse Board: "Splendidly like the half-preserved soundtrack to a forgotten low-budget 1970's (oc)cult film," (Wormwoodiana) Michael Plater
The latest What Colour is Sound comp, featuring tracks from The Rowan Amber Mill, Bity Booker, Jim Griffin, Plantman, Pettaluck, and more, plus my track "Your Family Ghosts", featuring Rothko. Michael Plater
supported by 8 fans who also own “The Guildford Tree Vol. 1”
Jonathan Sharpe has created an eerie soundscape of fizzing, distorted synths, samples from films and witchcraft rituals to welcome in the dark cycle. Draw near ,it is night in the woods as the hooded celebrants chant the name of the horned one.reminds me of old films like night of the demon or the devil rides out. incantations echo in the background as the music swirls menacingly and transports you away.come now be not shy won't you join the heartwood institute in this celebration? Doomshire
Inspired by a battle that took place in contested land in Beirut, Mayssa Jallad creates beautifully haunted folk songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 5, 2023
