Haunted Light presents: ‘By the Wayside, By the Woodland’

An evening of haunted sounds and visuals from The Black Country, marking May Eve. Tonight we dive into the hauntological uncanny with Hidden Britain, The Balloonist, SWLLWS and Timothy Parkes.

Haunted Light with Wayside & Woodland Recordings and Hidden Britain present an evening of haunted sounds and visuals from The Black Country.

Tonight we take a mesmerising dive into local hauntological themes through audiovisual performance, in the marking of May Eve; in folk tradition, the time of year exactly opposite Hallowe’en, when the veil between worlds is said to once again become thin.

May Eve (also known as Witches’ Night) takes place on the last dark night of winter, before the 1st of May (May Day/Beltane), when we welcome in the Summer and the lighter half of the year.

Hailing from the wyrd hinterland of the Black Country, double headline solo artists Hidden Britain and The Balloonist are tonight billed alongside longtime friends SWLLWS and Timothy Parkes, and will be live soundtracking their own films and visuals, blurring the lines between seasons and worlds.

Timothy Parkes
Opening for the night we have the wonderful Timothy Parkes. Tim is an artist and composer who started out in 1999 as a solo singer songwriter. The first ten years of his musical career was spent supporting artists such as Miles Hunt, Gary Lucas, Wayne Hussey, Hazel O’Connor and more. Having played three nights at the legendary Knitting Factory in NYC, he has since gone on to perform shows all over the UK at various venues and festivals.

After a forced hiatus in the cultural wilderness of the last ten years, Tim currently expresses his feelings about everything through his uniquely emotive sound. With an auditory palate influenced by the likes of Jeff & Tim Buckley and Pentangle, Tim’s music evokes rich, golden brown tones and shimmering rhythms which invite you to at once lose yourself and be held, in this eerily atmospheric whirlwind of song.

SWLLWS
SWLLWS (pronounced ‘Swallows’) is the longterm music project of artist and musician Sian Macfarlane. SWLLWS first came to life with lo-fi synths, found instruments and field recordings, layered with heavily-processed ghostlike vocals; recalling early 4AD and the English esoterica of Coil. Having supported artists such as Grouper and Josephine Foster, Sian left music to one side for a time before returning to it once again, during lockdown. Through open tunings on a charity shop guitar, latent folk forms emerge from layered, repetitive, finger-picked guitars influenced by artists such as Sibylle Baier and Karen Beth.

Through her music, SWLLWS’ recurrent obsessions come to the surface – the colour blue, and the mirrored surfaces of water – washed with early 90s slowcore and dream pop tendencies. Confessional lyrics mix with the underworld, where a secret world is described in a language of birds, trees and vampires.

Set to her own visuals, SWLLWS immerses us in the unsettlingly beguiling liminal space of her creation.

The Balloonist
‘The Balloonist’ is the solo project of Ben Holton (epic45, My Autumn Empire, Birds In The Brickwork, Wayside & Woodland Recordings).

Hazy, half-remembered childhood memory fragments, faded TV incidental music, schools programmes, quiet suburban afternoons of the 70s, 80s and early 90s, Ceefax and Teletext, old shopping centres, film grain, VHS quality loss and tape hiss inspire and combine live and in flux to form a melodic, experimental audiovisual dreamscape.

Expect to hear shades of The Caretaker and William Basinski with ghostly echoes of Prefab Sprout and other smudged 80s/early 90s sounds. Performed alongside hypnotic, colour saturated, reimagined vintage visuals, The Balloonist layers his music with these to form eerie, blissed out atmospherics.

Hidden Britain performs Wren’s Nest
‘Wren’s Nest’ by Hidden Britain is an experimental ghost story which combines an immersive, live soundtrack with cinematic storytelling.

The performance draws on the British supernatural and social realist work of film-makers such as Lawrence Gordon Clark, John Smith and Alan Clarke to explore the grief, loss and denial which haunts a family over three generations.

Performed by musician and visual artist Rob Glover (epic45, The Toy Library, Wayside & Woodland Recordings), ‘Wren’s Nest’ will incorporate an enveloping mix of visuals, tape loops, abstract electronics and noise, around a spoken word narrative.

‘Wren’s Nest’ takes its name from the ancient site on the western edge-lands of the Black Country, where it was filmed and produced.

We invite you to take your seats at tables tonight to immerse yourselves in this uncannily captivating evening of audiovisual performance.