Hauntology

O

owen

Well-known member
The Ink Spots- but generally loads of the wierdly chaste, microphone-diffused 30s-40s pop- pretty much anything on The Singing Detective soundtrack applies
Rhythm and Sound/Basic Channel/Main Street/Maurizio
Barry 7's Connectors 2 (italian library stuff)
some solo David Sylvian, esp Brilliant Trees & the stuff with Fennesz (and obv fennesz in general)-'drowning in my nostalgia' indeed
loads of Doo-Wop, especially The Diablos' crepuscular 'The Wind'
The Human League- The Dignity of Labour Parts 1-4

and lots of music that ought to have soundtracked documentaries on the Smithsons, or Erno Goldfinger, such as:-
Joe Meek- I hear a new world (esp the title track, with the chipmunk voices wailing 'hauuunting meeee...'
Basil Kirchin- Abstractions of the Industrial North
Roy Budd- Get Carter

oh! and just reminded by the pillbox, Scott Walker's Tilt is exemplary hauntology- remember him describing this as being like being forced to listen to all the disembodied voices of the 20th centrury, or summat (in the essay 'On The Mic', which is v good on the recording, the microphone and its immanent ghostliness...)
 
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T

turtles

in the sea
Definitely agree on adding Rhythm & Sound to the list...not so much for the full on vocal stuff, but definitely their mostly non-vocal self-titled album. It's like a second order dub record. Extra decayed.
 
H

henry s

Street Fighting Man
bipedaldave said:
Definitely agree on adding Rhythm & Sound to the list...not so much for the full on vocal stuff, but definitely their mostly non-vocal self-titled album. It's like a second order dub record. Extra decayed.
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on this tip, I would nominate William Basinski and his Disintegration Loops series...

all this talk about decay calls to mind a book, The Owl's Head (Rosamund Wolff Purcell), essentially a lengthy essay on a Maine junk collector, which touches upon the aesthetics of decay...in a non-musical sense, of course, but highly appropriate to this discussion...
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
I'm missing something here. was there another thread that defined this "genre"?

is it about music that have a haunting quality?
 
D

D84

Well-known member
Well anything on the Ash International label has to qualify as hauntological imo.

Especially that Ghost Orchid CD from a few years ago with the recordings of what appear to be actual ghost voices. They describe it thus:

The ParaPsychic Acoustic Research Cooperative [PARC], in association with Ash International, is proud to present the first ever fully comprehensive investigation into the paranormal phenomenon of EVP, otherwise known as Electronic Voice Phenomenon. Without doubt EVP falls into the catagory of the paranormal alongside other unexplained mysteries such as ufology, life after death & poltergeist activity. The listener is guided through a collection of strange and mysterious voices that have appeared without explanation onto the tapes of EVP researchers.
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More info etc. at the PARC site. (btw I met the guy who did this CD years ago: nice guy).

Another candidate not previously mentioned that leaps to mind is Mick Harris' ambient work as Lull and some of the ambient parts on the Scorn albums: definitely creepy haunted areas there; loads of disembodied voices if you listen carefully.

I'll have to check my collection at home later for more.
 
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B

big satan

HA-DO-KEN!
hail

so it's music that sounds haunting right? do they have to be quiet, or can they be loud too?

lots of stuff on kranky records, particularly windy&carl and charalambides, also labradford, low, dissolve, amp, philosopher's stone, godspeed, jessamine, jessica bailiff

sonic youth-sonic death, and most of the songs kim gordon sang on up to and including the evol LP e.g early american, ghost bitch, secret girl, i dreamed i dream, protect me you, shaking hell, flower, hallowe'en. some of lee ranaldo's solo records e.g. scriptures for a golden eternity, amarillo ramp, new life after fire.

fushitsusha - i saw it! that which before i could only sense
 
T

turtles

in the sea
big satan said:
so it's music that sounds haunting right? do they have to be quiet, or can they be loud too?
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Though obviously I'm just following the leaders on this one (blissblog, woebot, k-punk->the holy music-blogging trinity ;-) ), but my understanding is that it's not just about sounding haunting, which is really too easy a classification. I mean you could almost throw enya in there at that rate! I think the "memoradelia" tagged suggested on blissblog (by, hold on...that would be Raw Patrick on this very thread, ha!) is maybe a bit more accurate. It's all about reflecting and distorting a past that may never have been there in the first place. Bringing to life odd recollections of something that was old only in our minds, but also somehow tapping into deeper connections and form...something like that. History as mediated by crumbling memory processes. I dunno, read the above mentioned blogs, it's all being laid out as we speak.


And yeah, totally agree on the Disintegration Loops call. Some of my favorite ambient music ever...also, glad to see the love from k-punk for Consumed. Talk about echoes of reality.
 
M

Mike Powell

Revelatory
I've never posted on dissensus, but after realizing that this was where the hauntology thing would be incubating (for lack of a better word), I felt forced to register.

I like the "memoradelia" thing but I get this feeling that maybe it traps things too much in terms of time, makes it too obedient to a notion of the past.

I think the really interesting thing here is the "half-erased" notion; I had thought of Ariel Pink in conjunction with Ghost Box not as echoes of the past so much as a half-formed present, something in-between. Like dub, in certain ways. Sure, time has a LOT to do with it, but the great thing about ghosts is that they exist in the present; zombies are the dead returned to life, i.e. re-placed in the current moment. Y'know?

I think the Fennesz thing is really accurate in this instance; while memory seems a big part of Endless Summer (the title itself a reference to something nostalgic to begin with!), what always slayed me about that record was the atmosphere of erosion, as if it were somehow a record that existed in an ideal space, but you were positioned at a different angle from where it was projecting and hearing the interference, or something to that effect. Sort of how I feel about Ariel Pink. Anyone?
 
M

Mike Powell

Revelatory
Hah, and now I've gone and read k-punk/(Derrida)/((Buse, P., & Scott, A.))

"However, the ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past, even if the apparition represents someone who has been dead for many centuries, for the simple reason that a ghost is clearly not the same thing as the person who shares its proper name...The temporality to which the ghost is subject is therefore paradoxical, as at once they 'return' and make their apparitional debut."
 
B

Buick6

too punk to drunk
Tim F said:
For Hauntology-Gone-Pop (in an Avalanches stylee) check New Buffalo's first EP "About Last Night" - not so much the album though.
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New Buffalo are the biggest, most mediocre, piece of sub C86, 'tweecore' shite that have a reputation purely by Avalanches association I've ever heard..

V/VM label seem to have poioneered Hauntology it seems, I'd throw in some of the Butthole Surfers earlier stuff, but especially 'Locut Abortion Technician'..All the early Residents/Snakefinger stuff could sonically apply.

Obscure Aussie-grunge minstrel Joel Silbersher has done plenny of 'hauntology' type stuff with his 'Tendrils' projects...Jandek's first 10 albums.

there's always that dither that 'hauntology' could simply be lo-fi minus.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
what about Toru Takemitsu? his music doesn't have any direct reference to ghosts but is all about haunting memories and shadows. if Fennez counts surely Takemitsu is the king.

also:

Scott Walker

Coil

Diamonda Galas

Akira Rabelais
(especially the one with the extinct form of icelandic funeral songs)
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah definitely agree on I hear a New World, also that German glitch dub from Pole. Maybe some of the stuff on Oar by Skip Spence.
 
J

Jim Daze

Well-known member
Some Current 93 ('What Shadows we are', distant childrens voices singing, and Virginia Astley, a track by Jah Wobble called 'A 13' that is both psychogeographic and hauntological, 'Ground Zero' dub, that White Noise record probably already mentioned, Sylvian......"World Of Echo".....................,feeling this 'canon' but did anyway, not sure I understand the definition,passes the time though back in my boring job.
 
D

D7_bohs

Well-known member
'Dark was the night, cold was the ground' by Blind Willie Johnson and 'Jesus is a dying bed maker' by Charlie Patton the real low down shaking chill
 
M

mms

sometimes
D7_bohs said:
'Dark was the night, cold was the ground' by Blind Willie Johnson and 'Jesus is a dying bed maker' by Charlie Patton the real low down shaking chill
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aha i was going to say that - its on my mind alot the blind willie johnson song
also i hear a new world - esp considering the guys massive interest in the occult etc

infact the whole of the harry smith box set is a kind of ghostbox - a kind of device for hearing a lost past.

the caretaker stuff too - esp regarding the fact that 78's are pretty much irrelevant nowdays - redundant devices of a lost age,and also alot of ballroom songs were so beautifully salacious.
 
S

soup

Member
Is this just about music ?? Oh well ...Id' like to nominate Janet Cardiff's - The Missing Voice , an audio walk through Whitechapel. May be the reason that it had such an effect on me was the timing of my walk, on a dark wet winter afternoon much like today. The compression of time which it created with echoes of an imagined past meeting street noise, the sound of footsteps going in and out of sync with my own creating a feeling of being at times both the pursuer and pursued. The use of binaural microphones also gave an impression of occurrence just outside of your peripheral vision.
 
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