U → ARCHENFIELD

U shares his new album ARCHENFIELD, a psychogeographical portrait of a region close to Wales. A personal collection of ambient music and found sound that examines the relationship between geographical space and aural histories.

U mined a wealth of recorded material relevant to the area to construct this record. With a nod to traditional music, beautifully atmospheric sound pieces are created that are often mixed with painstakingly researched snippets of film, TV, YouTube videos and unearthed home recordings. Which produces a stirring reflection on local history and broader themes of how we interact, or even fail to interact, with English folklore today.

The album opens with two tracks that utilise crackly sampled piano to create a Lynchian primary school assembly vibe, particularly when a solo child vocal appears on ‘Is It A Kind Of Dream?’. There's a hauntological aspect to these tracks, firstly in how the disembodied instruments seem to yearn for physicality having long shed the corporeal presence of the human creating the sounds. Secondly, in the way ghostly backing vocals and whispered melodies bed the familiarity of upright pianos heard in schools and village halls throughout many childhoods, in a mildly unsettling ambience.

A melancholy piano and woodwind melody lures us into the shadowy sound world of ‘In Flanders, Again’. A gentle gust of ambient harmony provides a brief and chilling counterpoint to this sombre and poignant prayer of remembrance. The track is partly a tribute to Ivor Gurney, artist, musician and poet whose WW1 experiences affected the remainder of his life. The reference to the lasting effects of war ties back to the anti-war sentiment carried through U’s 2024 Life Isn’t A Fountain? EP.

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