Woodford Halse have been rather prolific with their cassette releases this past year or so, putting out a couple of releases a month with a consistent artwork style. Musically, their output is quite varied and ranges from experimental beat driven trax, to sparser, more ambient excursions.
In Mullands’s new cassette, he focuses on two UK locations for inspiration, Hob Moor in York and a trip to Cambridge. Utilising field recordings and dark, drawn out drones. The two long form pieces have a nice dynamic range and move across textures, gradually becoming increasingly smudged in vast swathes of reverb.
The press release refers to ‘hauntology’ (a term which appears to be adopted on various other labels lately). I’m not entirely sure what it means, other than to describe electronic music that contains a ghostly, spooky or gothic feeling (uneasy drones, minor keys and lots of reverb). I’ve heard it disparately referred to in (electro-acoustic) works by Pierre Shaeffer and more recently (garage) artists like Burial, hence my slight confusion. So I guess it’s a descriptive term for music that evokes a certain gloomy vibe?