This incredible new release follows a path along the electronic skyways first created by the German/Krautrock electronic pioneers of the 1970s such as Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Roedelius and Michael Rother.
Hawksmoor is James McKeown. He first created 'Hawksmoor’ five years ago as an imaginary hauntological soundtrack, inspired by the six Hawksmoor churches in London. Further releases have followed on Environmental Studies, the cassette-only label 'Spun Out of Control', Castles in Space and The Library of The Occult.
For his debut on Soul Jazz Records, Hawksmoor has created a fascinating blend of these two sensibilities – a love of German electronic music of the 1970s alongside the British retrofuturism and cultural memory bank aesthetic of hauntology - Ghost Box, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, Advisory Circle, Focus Group etc.
Using strictly modular synths (Moog Sub37), electronic drum rhythms, and guitars, Hawksmoor creates an electronic landscaped music world that is both new and old, immediately identifiable and yet utterly unique.
REVIEWS
"Stepping up the profile ladder to join Soul Jazz as one of the label’s exclusive cluster of non-archival signings – alongside Trees Speak and Brown Spirits – is Bristol-based James McKeown’s Hawksmoor project.
Furthering the reach of last year’s Saturnalia and Head Coach long-players, Telepathic Heights takes things deeper into his previously self-described ‘pagantronic’ explorations, by marking out more new-age, psych and prog-shaped routes within the modern kosmische landscape. Built around modular synths, electronic drums and treated guitars, there are shrewd nods to Ash Ra Temple, Popol Vuh and Michael Rother’s solo works as well as more sideways tips of the hat to Plankton Wat and Eternal Tapestry.
Therefore, in moving through the elemental fizzing and phasing of “Cycloid”, the smeary ethereality of “Praxis”, the languid melancholic majesty of “Athanasia” and the 70s dystopic cinematics of the closing “Abstract Machines”, Telepathic Heights dexterously pulls off being a strong self-consolidating calling card for a wider audience, in addition to supplying an extended immersive experience for existing Hawksmoor connoisseurs." Conrete Islands