Oneironautics: Vinyl LP
SJRLP554Label: Soul Jazz Records
Release Date: 11th October
Proper Kosmiche this, Soul Jazz Records only put out new stuff if it stands next to the masters like Can, Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Roedelius and Michael Rother and James McKeown's Hawksmoor project's latest could easily fit on their lauded German experimental comps. Haunting, motorik, hypnotic and the kind of record that pulls you into it's electronic vortex.
Hawksmoor’s new album ‘Oneironautics’ on Soul Jazz Records follows on from last year’s critically acclaimed ‘Telepathic Heights’, as well as a re-release of his album ‘Saturnalia’ on the Library of the Occult label earlier this year.
James McKeown, AKA Hawksmoor, continues his fascination with the sounds and sensibilities of 70s/80s German electronic groups – think early CLUSTER, HARMONIA, CAN, NEU!, HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS and MICHAEL ROTHER.
On this new album ‘Oneironautics’, he successfully combines these pulsating ripples of Germanic electronica with a number of decidedly English references: the soaring, hypnotic and pastoral qualities of BRIAN ENO, circa ‘Another Green World’; the long, sustained lines of ROBERT FRIPP’S FRIPPERTONICS; and the poetic feel of early DURUTTI COLUMN.
McKeown combines all of these elements while also remaining with one foot firmly in the British melodic hauntological modular synth aesthetic of hauntology – Ghost Box, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, Focus Group et al.
Once again using strictly modular synths, electronic drum rhythms, and guitars, Hawksmoor has created an electronic landscaped music world that is both new and old, immediately identifiable and yet utterly unique.