The Stranger, "Bleaklow"
Another V/VM alter-ego uses analog and digital sources to create vivid impressions of a specific landscape of Northern England. The mood is akin to a wet cold late-winter trek across the harshly beautiful terrain and the rare prettier music captures precious moments when the sun breaks through.
Cheekily, Bleaklow is available in either the ‘complete’ or ‘extended’ versions and there are additional downloads at the V/VM site. I am reviewing the former and the eleven tracks are all worthwhile. The dark and bleak atmospheres refer to the uppermost section of the Peak district between Lancashire and Yorkshire where, far from manicured gardens and agri-business, are some of the loneliest yet loveliest parts of England. The sweeping moors, winding paths, the craggy peaks and huge implacable stones exude an impressive permanence easily outstripping our meager human lifespan.
The album's impressions have a convincing ring of truth to them. This may be partly due to geographical and psychological distance. That is to say, the music benefits from the fact that The Stranger probably resides in Berlin and is gazing back home with an enhanced clarity of vision. In that sense, the recordings recall John Cowper Powys’ novels set in his native England written while he was exiled in the United States. Bleaklow also resembles (as a negative relates to a photograph) the decidedly jazz-classical approach of Old Heartland, Ian Carr’s shadowy portrait of the English countryside.
The overall sound here is as malevolent and nostalgic as The Caretaker (another V/VM favorite). The Caretaker revels in the dusty ballrooms, haunted halls and dance floors of memory—as is appropriate for an artist with origins broadly in the movie The Shining. By contrast, The Stranger concentrates on raw, bitter, splendidly egalitarian weather and its simultaneously battering and uplifting effect on humans.
The Stranger manages to convey nature at its most desolate and oppressive yet lying within reach of cheery humanity. This is partly achieved by naming tracks for Bob Greaves, retired reporter and Granada television broadcaster, as well as (beyond the ‘complete’ disc) for Bob Smithies the crossword compiler know as Bunthorne. The notion may be that the landscape has shaped people with the strength and wit to recognize its rugged splendor. The opening piece “Something To Do With Death” has an abrasive and somnambulant quality suggesting equal parts defiance, grandeur and gleeful derision. “Kirkbymoorside” is known as "the gateway to the Moors" and the track sounds suitably full of portent. Throughout Bleaklow there is an absence of prettiness which should definitely appeal to the perverse enjoyment of those who venture out in all weathers with Ordanance Survey map, mint cake, flask of tea, copy of The Good Pub Guide and the motto: "There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing..."
“Inverted Burial” manages to allude to a concept mentioned by Jonathon Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. Suicides have been buried in that decidedly non-restful position (as a post-mortem punishment) and English millenarian sects believed that this was the best position to be interred, since come the post-Apocalyptic resurrection the world would be turned upside down and the reborn would be upright! Of course, whenever the notions of a moor and of burial are mentioned in certain parts of Northern England the unfortunates slaughtered by Brady and Hindley cross the minds of the generation who recall those dreadful crimes. But hey, it’s not all doom and gloom from the tomb, “Solemn Dedication” has a slow ghastly thumping beat and ghostly quivering atmosphere that could conceivably get people twitching, well maybe just on the dance floors of Berlin, or up at the Overlook Hotel.
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