The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music & Culture by Andrew Mellor

 

The Northern Silence 

Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture

by Andrew Mellor 

La Bellezza della Nuova Musica by Emanuele Arciuli

 

La Bellezza della Nuova Musica

by Emanuele Arciuli

"Jien - Noti - Jien : Ħsejjes u Stejjer" by Immanuel Mifsud and Toni Sant

Jien - Noti - Jien : Ħsejjes u Stejjer

by Immanuel Mifsud and Toni Sant

Skin by Kerry Andrew

Skin
by Kerry Andrew
A Book Review

A Fugitive Summer... "Harvest" by Georgina Harding

Harvest

By Georgina Harding

A review 

Summertime Sadness: A review of "The Van Apfel Girls are Gone" by Felicity McLean

The Van Apfel Girls are Gone

by Felicity McLean

A bookreview

Become Ocean : Ben Smith's "Doggerland"

Become Ocean

Ben Smith's "Doggerland"

Doggerland is the name given in the 1990s to an area of land, now submerged beneath the North Sea, which connected Great Britain to Continental Europe.  Doggerland once extended to modern-day Denmark and far north to the Faroe Islands.  It was a grassland roamed by mammoth, lion, red deer – and their human hunters – but melting ice turned it into an area of marshes and wetlands before it was finally and definitively claimed by the waves around 8,000 years ago. (Incidentally, Doggerland was recently in the news following exciting archaeological discoveries).

The idea of a submerged world resonates with mythical and poetic associations and, as a result, “Doggerland” lends itself well as the title of Ben Smith’s debut novel.   The work, in fact, portrays an unspecified but seemingly not-so-distant future, where global warming and rising sea levels (possibly exacerbated by some other cataclysm) have eroded the coastline and brought to an end civilisation as we know it.  

This strange, new world is made stranger still by the purposely constrained stage against which the narrative plays out.  Smith focuses on two main characters, maintenance men on an enormous wind farm out in the North Sea, who lead a solitary existence on a decrepit rig amongst the rusting turbines.  Although we are given their names, they are generally referred to in the novel as “the Boy” and “the Old Man”.  Early on in the book, we are told that of course, the boy was not really a boy, any more than the old man was all that old; but the names are relative, and out of the grey, some kind of distinction was necessary. It’s a significant observation, because much of the novel’s undeniable power derives from a skilful use of a deliberately limited palette.  The men’s life is marked by a sense of claustrophobia, the burden of an inescapable fate.  The monotony of the routine is only broken by occasional visits of the Supply Boat and its talkative “Pilot”, who is the only link with what remains of the ‘mainland’.  The struggle to keep the turbines working with limited resources becomes an image of the losing battle against the rising oceans, at once awesome and terrible in their vastness.  The Romantic notion of the Sublime is given an environmentalist twist.  One can smell the rust and smell the sea-salt.

Whilst the reader is made to share the ennui of the Boy and his mentor, Smith turns his story into a gripping one by making the most of the scant plot elements. For instance, we are told that the Boy was sent on the rig to replace his father, after the latter’s unsuccessful escape attempt.  What exactly happened remains unclear but, together with the Boy, we glean some disturbing details along the way – in this regard, Smith takes a page out of dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction, and suggests that society has been taken over by some sort of totalitarian regime of whom the Boy’s father was, presumably, a victim.     Part of the pleasure in reading this novel comes from trying to piece together an understanding of what exactly is happening on the mainland, considering that the perspective given to us is that of two people stranded in the middle of nowhere.

At times, Doggerland reminded me of Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, which also describes a future marked by rising water levels. However, whereas Hunter’s vision, with its images of creation, birth and maternity, is ultimately a hopeful one, Smith’s is devoid of any feminine figure, suggesting a sterility in the human condition which can only lead to its annihilation.   Doggerland is haunting in its bleakness:  The wind blows, the branches creak and turn. Somewhere in the metal forest, a tree slumps, groans but does not quite fall.  The landscape holds fast, for a moment. For how long? It may be centuries. Barely worth mentioning in the lifetime of water...    

Kindle Edition, UK, 208 pages

Expected publication: April 4th 2019 by Fourth Estate

***

As a counterpoint to Ben Smith’s novel, I have chosen three classical works which share a minimalist/post-minimalist aesthetic.

First on the (play)list is “Industry” for amplified cello and electronics (1992) by American composer Michael Gordon (b. 1956), here performed by Ashley Bathgate.  The screeching feedback effects remind me of Doggerland's giant, rusting turbines.

Italian singer-songwriter-composer-artist-director Franco Battiato (b. 1945), with his obsession with Middle Eastern myth and religious traditions, is possibly the last person one would associate with a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel.  However, his Stockhausen-Prize-winning electronic piece L’Egitto Prima dell Sabbie (Egypt before the Sands), with its obsessive repetition of one simple rising scale, reflects on the one hand the expanse of the sea and, on the other hand, the mind-numbing weariness of the protagonists of Doggerland.  

    

In 2014, American composer John Luther Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for his 40-minute orchestral piece Become Ocean.  Like Doggerland, his piece evokes “the depth of the waves and the spray of the sea.  But it also warns us that ‘as the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean’.  You can listen to the piece here (performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra) and read about it on the brilliant Corymbus classical music blog.

Nu-folk : "Swansong" by Kerry Andrew

Swansong by Kerry Andrew

A musical review

Kerry Andrew is a musician with four British Composer Awards to her name. As a ‘contemporary classical’ composer she has written choral works which subtly subvert the tradition. As her alter-ego You Are Wolf  she (re)interprets folk songs in a contemporary, electronica-tinged idiom. Andrew's first novel, Swansong, is inspired by a folk ballad and shares some of the concerns and methods of her musical projects.

The novel's feisty protagonist and narrator is Polly Vaughan, an English literature undergraduate who, by her own admission, is more into booze, drugs and sex than into literary theory. After she experiences a disturbing incident in London, Polly joins her mother Lottie on an extended holiday in the Western Scottish Highlands. Polly hopes that this will help ease her feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

Plans, however, soon go awry. For a start, her attempts to build new friendships and relationships seem to fail miserably. Moreover, the natural environment, beautiful and wild as it is, also comes across as decidedly uncanny. Right on her arrival she spots a strange man pulling a bird apart in the dead of night. And as the days roll on, she starts to have increasingly strange and unsettling visions which cannot be easily explained away as the effects of weed on a heavy conscience. Could something otherworldly really going on?

What makes the style of this novel particularly distinctive is the stark contrast between the fresh, contemporary (and sweary) narrative voice and the elemental, mythical and timeless symbolism which underpins the story. This is not the only dichotomy present in the novel. Indeed, the book often presents us with opposites which turn out to be closer to each other than may be obvious at first glance. "Dead / Not Dead", the mantra which Polly repeats to herself, starts off as an expression of guilt and, by the end of the novel, attracts a deeper meaning. There are similar contrasts between the urban and the natural, the human and the animal, the old and the new. 

Andrew also manages to combine seemingly disparate genres. This is, at heart, a supernatural novel, a reworking of a timeless myth. But it also has elements of the psychological thriller, the crime story and the Bildungsroman. It is also a nature novel where the landscape itself becomes a central character. Somehow, it all manages to gel.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it is that sometimes the metaphors pile on top of each other, giving the impression that the author is trying too hard to come up with an unusual or striking image. To be fair, however, Polly is herself a whimsical literature student and so the unconventional narrative voice is in character. 

What I do know is that when I finished Swansong, I suffered withdrawal symptoms, which does not often happen to me. That is when I realised how much I enjoyed this eerie but beguiling novel.

Published:  January 25, 2018

                                                     

***

Of musical journeys

Listening to Kerry Andrew’s music provides an interesting counterpoint and, possibly, a different perspective to her literary work.   What it certainly carries over from her novel is her seamless mix of different genres.  She is classically trained, and her first British Composer Award was for a choral work called “Fall”.  Works for choir are still an central part of her musical oeuvre.  I particularly like the motet “O Nata Lux”, performed and recorded in this video by the London Oriana Choir as part of the five15 project 

Another concern of Kerry Andrew is writing for young and/or amateur performers.  One of her works, composed for the Wigmore Hall, is the community chamber opera “Woodwose”, which won her another British Composer Award in 2014.  Her latest British Composer Award win was in the Music for Amateur Musicians category, for a piece featuring the massed National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 2016 : “who we are”

Just as important to Andrew is her work as the artist “You Are Wolf” (youarewolf.com) under which name she has released 2 albums.  The first one “Hawk to the Hunting Gone” explores the theme of birds in folklore and includes a track called Swansong.

Here’s a live performance of Cuckoo:

Kerry Andrew’s interest in folklore goes beyond a love of ballads and traditional songs.  She has recently written an erudite article for the brilliant Folklore Thursday website on swans in myth and folklore.  It features several references to her debut novel and its sources of inspiration.  But it does contain some spoilers – so perhaps the article works better as an “afterword” after the novel has woven its spell.