Label: Folklore Tapes

当店激推しレーベル英Folklore Tapesの音源!!英国のディープな民俗学を探究、長年に渡り広く収集されてきた歴史のイメージをアブストラクトな音楽と実験的ビジュアルで作品化する、まさにインディペンデントな活動を行っているFolklore Tapes。本作はスウェーデン超有名科学者・神学者・思想家"エマヌエル・スヴェーデンボリ"の神秘体験を音源化したもの。生きながら霊界を見て来たと言う霊的体験を、レーベルオーナーであり研究者のDavid Chatton Barker、レーベル最初期からリリースを重ねる重要人物Sam McLoughlinのデュオがサウンド化、なんとアンティーク時計のチャイム音のコレクションだけを重ね崇高な音響ドローンとして提示した傑作。24ページのA5ブックレット付き。



Folklore Tapes grow yet another branch of investigation through their new Mystic Series, which begins with the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg, who spent the latter portion of his life living in England.
The Heavenly Realms unfolded from Folklore Tapes’ residency at Swedenborg House in October 2022. The house, in Bloomsbury Way, London, is the headquarters of the Swedenborg Society, an organisation dedicated to the study and publication of the works of scientist, philosopher and visionary Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton Barker were invited to respond creatively to Swedenborg’s legacy, and it will come as no surprise to their followers that the duo took inspiration from Swedenborg’s mystical experiences. Swedenborg’s most renowned work, Heaven and Hell (1764), synthesised years of dreams, trance states and ecstatic communications with angels into a complete vision of the afterlife and the spiritual realms. In it Swedenborg meticulously details a stratified order of the heavens, an ultimate reality within which physical matter relates to spirit through divine correspondences emanating from a highest, purest echelon, God.

The duo approach this vision of eternity through music created entirely with a collection of antique clock chimes. As is often the case in their work, this seeming limitation is precisely what unfetters the project’s singular, expressive depths. The Heavenly Realms opens with a fade from silence to shimmering tintinnabulations and pealing chimes, a wave of sound whose undertow pulls the listener into collective memories of struck metal as timekeeper, summoner of souls and banisher of evil spirits.