INTRODUCING - Anna Von Hausswolf

Her video's having popped up unbidden onto my You Tube account, I tiptoed into the sonic landscapes of Anna Von Hausswolf. At first I wasn't sure what was going on with all this church organ stuff and dynamic band accompaniments, did I like this?. Where on earth was this coming from?  Was it just too ponderous? It felt like this ought to be pidgeon holed as Gothic but then it definitely is not. Sometimes she sings like Kate Bush and then her voice takes a chilling turn and screeches away with all the guttural power of a Swedish Diamanda Galas. Over time and repeated listens, there is a lot going on here that I find interesting, and have really come to love her work. She is uncatagorisable, though there are a rich plethora of descriptive bandwidths to fit her in - neoclassical dark wave, ambient pop, art pop, ethereal wave, experimental rock, drone. None of which are truly fit for purpose, but can be touched on for brief moments during one single track.

On her first album Singing From The Grave, there are only lyrical hints of the direction she'll later take. Quite carefully constructed songs accompanied by piano with the occasional unconventional arrangement. By Ceremony two years later she's discovered the richness of a church organ and the full Anna Von Hausswolf sound has emerged. This became her breakthrough album, it is dreamlike and suffused with complex imagery, from a world where reality and that of a foreboding folk tale meet. It displays a more diverse range of styles, from the unnerving to the frankly catchy pop tune of Mountains Crave

With each succeeding album things become more darkly sinister, the tracks longer and plunge in much deeper. Certainly by the time you get to Dark Magic's stand out track The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra you can sense an affinity with the grand guignol of Nick Cave's early work with the Bad Seeds, and the aforementioned Diamanda Galas, poking through. Its simply so out there it verges on the edges of sanity. But it is terrific stuff.

After Dark Magic the only place to go was to strip back to the basics. All Thoughts Fly is completely instrumental, no singing, just the organ and electronics. Recorded on an old organ in the sight specific acoustics of its church. The track Sacro Bosco typifies the ambitions of this album. with a brooding atmosphere, full of apprehension and dread. 

She was brought up in a creative environment. Her Father, Carl Micheal Von Hausswolf is well known in Sweden as an avant garde composer. His long layered electronic drone pieces resemble the sounds of industrial machinery as heard through several layers of concrete. At times Anna uses the organ's ability to sustain and layer notes on top of each other to create a third ringing sound that is reminiscent of this aspect in her Father's work. As on this track The Miraculous.

Her videos are often made by her sister Maria Von Hausswolf who is an award winning photographer, filmmaker and performance artist. Visually they are bleak companions that expand on her younger sisters musical psychology. These videos frequently show figures travelling through a forest, a cave or a desolate landscape populated only with overgrown ruins. Its as though we are being taken through a subterranean inner world, through someone else's dream or nightmare. Here nothing makes sense, nothing can be explained, yet it feels all too real.  Anna Von Hausswolf's work is well worth exploring.

POEM - The Cunt's Wait

nostalgia, impaled on a bumper 

hung, drawn, quartered
spattering its blood and sentiment
into the breeze of a national highway
like a necromancer's flail
infecting our countryside with
whatever can be born on air
upon every grey groin
and half dead sinew

this patriotic portrayal, is romanced
and strung up above my hearth too
forever glaring down
reprimanding me
for the lack of fealty
for being ashamed of my own homeland
for believing its virtues
have been handed over to the charlatans of algorithm
with little moral sense
for when it crossed over
the line of truth

turn on any screen
and there they will be
wanking these false mythologies
in my face 
whilst pleasuring themselves on prime time
the facts of history slip their anchor
leaving our identity cut
no deeper than a tattoo
with a half remembered resemblance
to the oracles of Albion.

I find I'm more troubled
when forced to see the world
only through the English mirror
its diseases and morbidity
displayed in roadside shrines
the supermarket flowers fastened
to railings, rotting on verges
commemorate a point of collision
with casualty or demise, whilst bellowing
for the full flavour of revenge
if there is no rejuvenation, then
'some fucker must pay.'

I mine the past and present
for less parochial characters
from history, culture, in the provocations
of difference, the sculpture
of landscape, of this and that, place
my sense of belonging
against a specific topography
these keep my silence neat
when the treasures of the patriot
are flagged up and given militias
to cheer on the goodhearted devotions
of citizens to lay down their lives
like leaves in autumn
with the promise of a future
of spring and family pride

drums will be banged, trumpets 
call forth loudly over our
ancestral bones, the spirit
rooted in the soil of a nations psyche
preserved in the rolling of its hills, our
felt supremacy, superiority, is stupefied
here is where the cunt's wait, they wait
to take your wrist, slash a chicken's vein over a
sacred stone or two, have the gasoline ready
light torches, fold their arms,
stand back and smirk.

I imagine on that day
trying hard to remind myself
of principles, of moral resolve
but mostly that I'll be too scared to
turn my back on anyone
braced and open to death
posted via a knife
whilst wanting nothing to do
with the creation of more misery
as those with hardened hearts, or
no hearts at all, snap the wings of truth
and throw them off a cliff
there will be then
no way to walk away from
or bargain with
the beckoning of Hades.

 
Stephen Lumb
written October 2020

QUOTATION MARKS No 50 - James Baldwin

 " I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly."

James Baldwin

Taken from the essay Autobiographical Notes in the compilation Notes of a Native Son, published by Penguin Modern Classics.

OVERHEARD - No 3

 There I was watching a perfectly innocent documentary about historical  cold case investigations and the trail leads them back to grave robbing and its connections with early anatomists. Then this line from the narration hit my chuckle bones like a club. It went something like as follows:-

"John Hunter was the most successful and respected anatomist of his era so much so that the Bishop of Durham bequeathed his rectum to him for scientific analysis."

Well I think that's what was said.

WATCHED - Bait

Sometimes the hype is wrong, sometimes the hype is just hype, sometimes it can be more than just cool hip hyperbole. In the case of Bait it is very definitely justifiable. To recount the narrative would provide you with only bare bones of what this film is. First impressions within the first few minutes might be that you've stumbled across an archive movie from a much earlier period in British film history. Filmed in black and white with a scratched film surface and something curiously out of sync and off about the sound quality. It echoes films like Local Hero and its earlier antecedent Whisky Galore, in its theme of locals fighting back against incomers.Whilst owing a stylistic debt to early public service documentaries.

That however is where the similarities end as Bait never lightens its bleakness with humour, its story-line is set on taking a much darker turn Where it is remarkable is in its visual composition, editing, cinematography and particularly in its use of heightened sound to be both beautiful, dramatic and yet sinister in tone. This is a contemporary movie that wears its knowing references casually, confident to seed the present moment with foreboding flash forwards, the visual premonitions of where this will all end up.

For in this Cornish sea-fishing village Martin's worldview is out of sink with the changes going on all around him. Sea-fishing is being quickly pushed aside by tourism, yet Martin is prepared to fight back even though he can't even afford to own his own boat. The tourists don't understand the rhythms and traditions of a fisherman's daily lifestyle, they own his old family home and ruffle his feathers all the time. Martin's lifestyle has a gaping fissure developing right down the middle of it, that he wants to heal by returning things to how they were.

This fissure is given aural form by the dialogue being recorded separate to the filming bringing a disjunctive unreality to it. It's as if this were a nightmare or foreign film badly dubbed into English. It also allows the director Mark Jenkins to insert and heighten the smallest  noise, whatever he wishes. Sounds are allowed to stand alone and speak volumes, particularly in building up the tension or intensity of feeling a person is experiencing. This is brave film making, taking all sorts of risks by messing around with style, format and narrative sequence. 

Bait is currently available to watch for free via Channel 4 for the next month, or BFI Player and Amazon Prime to rent