Two recent items from John Harvey, the sound artist based at Aberystwyth University. His first three Aural Bible projects were concerned with religious texts, spoken words (evangelism) and printed texts (using the bible and other religious sources to create sound), but Penallta Colliery: Sound Pictures (GENCD007) is themed on the history of coal mining. Right away the cover artworks, including historic black-and-white photos of miners and title placards from a British Movietone newsreel, clue us in to the thematic concerns, and the methods Harvey will use. Scanning the CD tracklist – more like the table of contents to a thesis – we see that each track is called a “plate” and, intriguing titles aside, that the creator proposes to take us on a time-travel journey from 1858 up to 2021, with an extended sojourn in the 1930s.
Harvey’s preoccupation with much of his work is to do with how we perceive history; his contention is that we focus on visual and textual data, and overlook the auditory information. This idea informed his Noisome Spirits project, where (using his imaginative powers) he created a convincing audio portrait of 18th century Wales, starting from the writings of a Non-conformist minister and its vivid descriptions of the rugged countryside. When it comes to coal-mining in Wales, Harvey points to the “engravings, drawings and paintings” that have conventionally been sourced to tell us its story, noting how what began as a cottage industry grew into a “large and complex means of production” after the mid 19th-century. But what about the “distinctive acoustic character” of coal-mining?
Enter the 1930 film from British Movietone, South Wales Colliers Go Down the Mine, which is the primary source used by Harvey in creating this work. The date is significant; we didn’t have sound cinema until about 1927, and it was only in the mid-1920s that electrical recording equipment had been brought to the point where making an accurate sound documentary of work in a coal mine was even technically possible. Thanks to the work of the AP Archive, it’s possible to view this movie on YouTube. John Harvey waxes lyrical about its documentary qualities – the direction, the editing, the narrative skills – and he has used the soundtrack of the working environment as raw material for this record. Not just machinery (hydraulics, drills, wheels, cages) but also the voices of miners, and musical interludes sampled from the documentary chapter headings, all appear in some form. Interestingly, British Movietone seem to have adopted a different approach to their contemporaries Pathé News; Pathé tended towards spoken-word editorialising, often supplied by an announcer with a plummy voice, subtly “directing” the audience’s perception and standing open to a charge of patronising. Conversely, this South Wales Colliers film allows the miners to speak for themselves; the voiceover is provided by the pit overman, someone who actually knew the work, describing it in their own words. That said, the story on the film is mostly told in pictures and sound.
Deploying his typical skills and methods – collage, time-stretching, overlays, reverse tapes, varispeed, and digital synthesis – John Harvey has carefully created a highly simpatico sound-portrait of his chosen subject, one that is arguably very true to the original film, the work of the miners, and indeed true to a part of the country in which he grew up and knows very well. The results are not only beautiful to listen to, but can have the effect of stirring up a nostalgic feeling for the past, even if we’ve never been to Wales. I mean there’s a deep connection to the subject matter here, and it makes the record somehow more direct and accessible than his Aural Bible projects, which (much as I love them) might seem somewhat abstracted in comparison. John Harvey even adds a closing note to bring us up to date on the realities of fossil fuel extraction and its significant contribution to climate change, reminding us that this “romantic attraction” to the past does need to be framed in the context of the 21st century environmental crisis. (24/10/2022)
Quite different to the above is Seven Prayers for Stephen Chilton: Requiem (GENCD006). With his Aural Bible projects, Harvey was dealing with complex and wide-ranging ideas and themes, to do with religion, the spoken word, and printed texts; here, it’s all about one person, a former student of his whom he knew personally, and who committed suicide in 2014. As such, it’s obviously a deeply personal statement, and at one level I feel it would be too intrusive to even comment on it. There’s a religious dimension, an aspect that might connect this release to the Aural Bible works; Stephen Chilton was a painter who realised his faith through his art; he regarded his work as a “visual representation of prayer”. There’s no doubt Chilton was extremely devout. His work led him into “solemnity, exultation, lament, certainty, and doubt” as he tried to magnify God with his art. There’s a musical dimension too; Chilton listened to records of devotional works by Gorecki, Arvo Part and Thomas Tallis, and produced a series of paintings as direct responses to these musical pieces, as he worked hard to select suitable colours and hues to match the specific pitches in the music.
John Harvey was Stephen Chilton’s art tutor at Aberystwyth University and evidently became very close to the work. The record we hear is Harvey’s simpatico – that word again – attempt to restate the colour and light of a Stephen Chilton painting in sound. I refer you to the booklet notes, where he indicates the precise and methodical ways in which he achieved this “sonification” of visual information. In a way, perhaps we could regard this as the culmination of a lengthy and mysterious process – the music of Tallis and others inspires Chilton, who later recasts his spiritual insights as fine art paintings; later still, Harvey recasts these paintings as layered, abstract sound art. If there’s any point to my banal observation above, it’s just to point out the purity and beauty of the distilled music that you’ll hear on this CD. The inclusion of an unknown choir singing and sampled from the radio on ‘Prayer 4’ should bring you to the point of tears, and if it does, perhaps this record can be regarded as a success. But it’s also tragic, and deeply melancholy; as further proof of his compassion, John Harvey has dedicated this work “to all men who are challenged by mental health issues or have chosen to leave this life prematurely”.
Images of Chilton’s paintings appear on all six panels of the digipak, and there are his diary extracts reproduced in the notes; again, making me feel I’m intruding on private grief. Tremendous honesty in this release, as the creator faces up to a difficult subject and doesn’t flinch from the hard work of expressing his grief in a heartfelt and appropriate manner. A real achievement. (30/05/2022)