Harry Deerness: “Not A Well Man”.
November 2, 2011, 0 comments
Harry Deerness is a marvelous record, a delightful listen all along, music with a subtly enchanting quality that makes it virtually impossible to escape from. But Harry Deerness is also a strange record, a weird experience – weird as in “truly remarkable”. There’s something about it, something ghost-like, haunting. Over the course of 35 minutes, eerie, fragile snippets of melody fade in and out, frequently interrupted by peculiar sounds and noises of unknown origin, building up an absorbing, unsettling atmosphere. What we hear is mostly blurred analogue material, hidden behind a gentle fog of tape hiss, that has been stitched together, but sometimes an apparently newer segment of electronica emerges, breaking the enclosing maelstrom of melancholia and obscure recollection. What is this, where does such music come from?
“Harry Deerness”, the London-based boutique label Spillage Fete Records lets us know, “is an ambitious, immersive sound-collage assembled principally from the contents of an unmarked collection of cassette tapes, procured from an anonymous source by [Half Cousin songwriter Kevin] Cormack on a trip to Orkney.” Cormack, so the story goes, had somehow inherited the immense tape collection from an old musician – let’s call him Harry Deerness – on said island, and subsequently put together the record. The girl who had given him the cassettes furthermore started a humble and cautious yet astonishingly beautiful blog, writing under the pseudonym “Marro”, to share her drawings and recollections of encounters with people she has visited.
Initially, it is quite unclear if one is supposed to buy this fairy tale-like narrative. In an age of alias overuse and cheap mystification of artistic identities, a certain suspicion is inevitable. On the other hand, it’s almost too beautiful not to be believed. And after all, does it even matter ultimately? Probably not. However, I still couldn’t help but asking Kevin Cormack about his project, and here’s what he told me:
“I’m interested in the limitation and personal connection of using only one person’s cassette tape collection as source material for an album. I’ve been acquiring other people’s collections over the last few years; a janitor from a warehouse I worked in, a journalist’s interview tapes, 4-track tapes from a guy I bought a 4-track from, some recorded tarot readings and a couple of family members’ who were transferring all their tapes to mini-disc.
When Marro was clearing out Harry’s spare room she was going to give his tapes to a charity shop but I managed to get hold of them instead. The Harry Deerness album is a combination of his tapes and my own music – a kind of remote collaboration. It’s the first album I’ve been able to realise through this process but all the other cassette collections could ultimately all fuel Harry-style albums.”
You may order Harry Deerness on CD or LP over here. Head over to the label’s Soundcloud to stream the album in full. Needless to add, highly recommended.
