Excellent item is Oxmardyke (TOUCH TONE 83) credited to Philip Jeck & Chris Watson, two unique and highly significant creators who both happen to have been represented extensively on the Touch label and some might say some of their best releases have appeared under that imprint. Sad and touching as this is probably one of the last releases under Jeck’s name, as he was lost to us in 2022.
The gestation of Oxmardyke actually goes back quite a bit further, to 2017 at least, when Watson picked up some interesting field recordings on his portable Webcor during his extensive travels – which took him from the north bank of the Humber to the rail crossing at Oxmardyke by way of Faxfleet. Train recordings soon followed; he went back to get more of them. At this point a lout like myself is minded to bring in El Tren Fantasma, his wonderful 2011 release which to me amounted to a semi-fantastical vision of rail travel in Mexico, but there is no real connection and Watson has not exhibited an ongoing fixation on the subject of the Iron Horse or any of its mares. However, that Mexican railway no longer exists – Watson documented it and it has passed into heritage – and neither does the Oxmardyke rail crossing, or its signalman. Yes, a signalman – it’s hard to believe any branch line would continue to employ a person who holds that occupation in the 21st century, but there it is. He shouted. Watson heard the shout, He climbed up and joined this man in the gate box and pointed his recording stick out. No wonder he was already thinking of the short story by Charles Dickens, made into a fine short film for television starring Denholm Elliott.
Well, this diversion into the occult was of interest to Jeck too I expect, but he delved further into the history of this particular area as soon as he got wind of what Watson was doing. Jeck found evidence of everything from Anglo-Saxon settlements of the 6th century to Knights Templar connections; apparently there are indeed some traces of Templar / Freemasonry imagery in certain rural churches in Yorkshire, at any rate these traces are visible to those who are looking for them. Jeck’s concern was with how “sounds, rhythms and textures” from the past may leak into the modern landscape, which resonates strongly (I propose) with Watson, whose work has often been informed by a near-mystical sense of “place”, affirmed by his reading of such outliers as Alfred Watkins, who wrote The Old Straight Track in 1925 and launched the hiking careers of many a wide-eyed hippy in search of ley lines. I say all this just to indicate the exchange of ideas between our two sound artists, the sharing of common ground, and how a work of art is often 99% talking, thinking and planning before one gets to the one percent of final execution. It is great they managed to work together and one wishes they could have done it more often.
We are now free to hear these evocative, understated sounds – which only partially evoke the sensations of rail travel, and are mostly obscure and bewildering (in a good way) – and read the touching sleeve notes, and look at the Wozencroft photos of rail crossing paraphernalia, and we can start to concoct our own imaginary trace-routes through alternative histories of our country with this alluring and slightly unsettling miasma of aural phantomry. In a real sense, Dickens’ Signalman is here, dumbfounded and terrified by the uncanny shouts of “below there”. From 2 May 2023.