Wayside And Woodland Recordings Ben Holton shares his latest album as The Balloonist, Dreamland, and a specially curated accompanying playlist with our Monolith Cocktail readers. Author: Ben Holton and Dominic Valvona.
A week on from the release of Ben Holton’s latest stunning and mesmerising hazy album under The Balloonist appellation, the Monolith Cocktail is pleased to have been asked to share a specially curated accompanying playlist palette of musical and atmospheric influences chosen by the co-founder of the South Staffordshire and West Midlands based record and print platform Wayside And Woodland Recordings.
Thematically, through the delicate and gauzily floated and sparkled, Dreamland is inspired by Holton’s ‘childhood memories’ and ‘how they echo and ripple through adolescence, young adulthood and beyond.’ Retrieved and conjured up into spells of ambient ghostly resonance, the more hypnotising and hazily filtered, these visitations from the past are both magical and oblique. The Balloonist’s oeuvre of recollected memories prompted by landmarks on the environment, and the more abstract formed dreamscapes of his imagination form an understated but no less stunning, visualised soundtrack.
Holton’s Bandcamp entry offers up ‘shades of The Caretaker, July Skies, Basinski etc but also ghostly echoes of Prefab Sprout, Pet Shop Boys and other smudged 80s/early 90s sounds…’ All of which I’d concur with, but also offer a touch of the Durutti Column and Mark Hollis. Most of those inspirations, or at least congruous bedfellows, can be found in the playlist that Holton has specially compiled for the blog below.
From sisters with transistors to new age ambient composers, 80s art pop and school TV soundtracks, the journey that Holton has laid out for our readers and followers is sublime and majestic: a rich compilation of crystallised heralding, synthesised bells and tender sweeps.
I now hand you over to Ben who has written an insightful accompaniment that informs and offers a window in on his and that of The Balloonist’s processes and inspirations:
‘For this mix I’ve included music that hovers in and around the last three The Balloonist albums and, in some ways, has been feeding into my subconscious over the last 43 years. This is music I never thought, when I first started making music, would be influencing the sounds I made myself.
Specific to Dreamland, though, and the only ‘song’ featured on the playlist, we begin with ‘Wild Horses’ by Prefab Sprout. There are actually a fair few 80s pop songs I could have included here but that wasn’t quite my aim for this mix. ‘Wild Horses’ is a spectacular production, one which teeters on the edge of a dream and, at points, falls right in (maybe it’s when we hear the breathy voice of Jenny Agutter?). This is the exact kind of song I was imagining falling in and out of sleep listening to, whilst be driven around the warm summer lanes in the late 80s/early 90s. It’s all about those warm pads and chimes.
Ray Russell is an English session musician and Jazz player and it’s very likely you’ve heard some of his soundtrack and incidental music on one of the many TV shows he appears in. The album ‘Childscape’ is my particular favourite and features many glistening, chiming pieces that transport me back to childhood (as I’m guessing was at least *part* of his aim?).
More library music now, with the legendary Trevor Bastow of Bruton Music fame etc. It’s his late 80s and 90s work that fascinate me the most though. Seen by some as a little sterile (maybe?), to me, it’s the soundtrack to childhood intrigue and the subtle beauty of the every day. ‘Preservation’ is a perfect example of this.
Watching the ITV Schools programming of the 80s and early 90s, either in school on a massive telly on wheels or at home feeling ‘slightly unwell’ was an absolute delight (for some strange reason I can’t quite put my finger on!). One of my favourite bits though was the in-between segments, during which we waited for a programme to start, literally watching a chrome ITV logo slowly rotate. To aid our anticipation, were treated to Brian Bennett’s wonderfully exploratory ‘The Journey’, lulling us into a hazy daydream. Then, to snap us out of it and gently rouse us for the ‘main feature’, we’d have the cheery ‘Just A Minute’ (not included here). Both classics.
I only discovered Suzanne Ciani a couple of years ago and it may have been the cover that caught my eye. A soft-focus image of a lady in white, in front of a big mixing desk. And behind her, a couple of lovely big synthesisers in front of a nice big window. It put me in mind of a living room from the early 80s, all wood panelling and afternoon sun. The album is an absolute beauty and ‘Malibuzios’ blew me away when I first heard it. The descending synth chimes were so familiar and connected with something deep inside, something that, you’ve guessed it, whisked me back to the warmth of childhood. In particular the quiet weekdays on which I reflected on the ‘A Quiet Day’ album.
Will Ackerman is an artist I’ve only recently delved into properly, after dipping my toe into the world of his California based Windham Hil label (now sadly defunct) a little over the years. His is a sound I feel very familiar with. Not just the folk inspired acoustic guitar, a sound I grew up hearing, but the fretless bass, synth pads and crisp reverb that accompanies and enhances it. Again, it’s a sound that takes me back to my 80s childhood, listening to tapes in my parent’s car. The way folk music, such as Fairport Convention adapted to the popular pallet of times is where I can trace this familiarity back to, I think. Also, as with Suzanne Ciani, there’s the aspect of New Age music here that, as a kid, being exposed to it by my mum, kind of annoyed and infuriated me. However, those sounds stayed in my head and I’m becoming more and more open to those sounds as time goes on.
My good friend Antony Harding of July Skies introduced me to (Genesis founder member) Anthony Phillips a few years ago and I am eternally grateful to him for that. I mainly love Anthony’s home recorded ‘Private Parts and Pieces’ series that started in the late 70s. Dreamlike snapshots that can lull one into a nostalgic revery at the drop of a well-timed key change. ‘Summer Ponds and Dragonflies’ is a good example of this.
I’m not sure how I stumbled onto the work of Kuniyuki Takahashi, but it was definitely via Bandcamp. I don’t really know any of his other music other than his ‘Early Tape Works’ compilations to be honest but was captivated, totally, the first time I heard them. There’s something about the saturated warmth of these tape recordings that, especially on headphones, just completely encapsulates me. Cocoon-like. I think some of this definitely seeped into certain tracks on Dreamland.
I’ve been listening more and more to artists on the German ECM label over the past few years and Eberhard Weber is one of my favourites. Again, like the New Age music I detested as a kid, Jazz is something I’ve grown to absolutely adore, especially the stuff that borders on ambient and New Age. It’s definitely something I’m leaning into with The Balloonist. As I’m by *no means* a jazz proficient guitarist, it’s fun to pretend I am and, as a result, it pushes me into unfamiliar territory. Which is important as an artist, I think.
Staying with the ambient Jazz theme I’ve chosen another of the greatest exponents of the genre, Pat Metheny. His chord phrasing, tone and melodic sense is just magical I think.
And to end, we go back to pop music. But this time it’s a drifting, dreamlike deconstruction of ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ by Tears For Fears. I heard this many moons ago on the b-sides compilation CD ‘Saturnine Martial & Lunatic’ which I’d borrowed from a friend of mine. I was enjoying the gently swaying rhythm and synth pads and then I was hit by that beautiful pirouetting guitar line. Eventually it resolved into the familiar cyclical pattern we all know and love and I realised it was some kind of meditation on the original theme of the song. I was quietly blown away. In some ways it’s the ultimate reference point for Dreamland, as it’s literally a piece of drowsy ambience with disembodied elements of pure pop threaded and weaving through it like ribbons of memory.
So, in short, with The Balloonist, I’m leaning into sounds that informed my childhood in ways that other music didn’t. The less obvious sounds. Half heard smooth radio pop, incidental TV music and 80s folk. Also, sounds that I actively *didn’t like* as a young teenager, namely Jazz and New Age which have taken on a deeper resonance and poignance over time, further opening my ears and mind to the infinite possibilities of making music.’ Ben Holton
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
Our Daily Bread 596: Junkboy ‘Littoral States’
October 12, 2023
ALBUM REVIEW/DOMINIC VALVONA
Junkboy ‘Littoral States’
(Wayside And Woodland Recordings)
Ah, the brothers Hanscomb have returned, and all is suddenly well in the world. Although the catalyst was sparked by the death of Mik and Rich’s father during the initial stages of the Covid pandemic, their latest album is a disarming love affair with the two moiety-tied counties that have offered them the most inspiration, space for ruminating and joy. For Littoral States takes a moving journey across the much romanticised, painted, photographed and literary rich coastlines and river ways of West and East Sussex – a landscape I’m very much aware of, my former playground before making the move north to Glasgow.
Drawn to this mostly idyllic part of England from Essex (the inland versant inspiration for the brothers’ 2019 memento, Trains Trees Topophilia; the “earth” companion piece to this album’s “water”) for a number of reasons, West Sussex and its seaside resort of Bognor Regis was the birthplace of the brothers father. It served as a concept of a gentle kind, as the Junkboy appellation duo conceived of processing that loss, of that connection, by musically and lyrically setting out from that holiday camp town and travelling through a number of notable, quintessentially English folkloric imbued spots and towns (and of course the city of Brighton & Hove) linked to water or the sea.
Toes have already been dipped in such fertile climes of psychogeography and scenic aspiration; the already mentioned Trains Trees Topophilia set in Essex but venturing out into both Brighton & Hove (its Hove affixed bedfellow the first meeting place between me and Rich, many moons ago) and picturesque Seaford (where Rich has lived with his family for a good few years now). The emphasis is now on a proto-pilgrimage of their settled homes (Mik down at the other end of the map, in Worthing, West Sussex; another well-known stop on the mainline for us commuters between Portsmouth and Brighton & Hove), taking in the scenic routes, coastal and river pathways in-between.
Read up and absorbing the myriad of either vivid or washed applied depictions of the two Sussex counties (from the brothers Paul and John Nash to the magical ruins watercolours of John Piper and charming quaint naïve port scenes of fisherman-artist Alfred Wallis), Junkboy have accepted the calling of the most congruous Wayside And Woodland Recordings label to fashion a beautifully emotive pulling album of the pastoral, bucolic and near mistily mysterious. As that label name suggests, musician Ben Holton’s burgeoning platform features landscape pieces prominently; from uniformed pylon fields to near faded recollections of hilltops and valleys via the work of epic45, Oliver Cherer, El Heath and My Autumn Empire – some of which, have influenced the brothers own sound over the years. And so it was a no brainer that this union would work out: almost effortlessly actually. Holton, a multitasking recording artist, label boss, is also a dab hand in the artwork department, providing the ‘aesthetic vision’ via the Sussex coastal photography of Jolene Karmen.
To that same vision, you can add a penchant for and an imbued influence of Sandy Denny And The Strawbs, Ultramarine, Forest and Joe Hisaishi. And of course, if not always obvious but sometimes just in spirit, the instrumental ‘elements’ suites found across the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and SMiLE LPs. If Brian Wilson was in fact born in Heathfield instead of Hawthorne then he might very well have turned out this album’s ‘Cuckmere River Rises’ vaped mirage – from the introductory French horn masquerading trumpet to the custom wobbled and flange fanned vibrato guitar.
Before that fast flowing river song, you can hear a hint of the Californian’s percussion on the eccentric English supernatural ‘Witch Of The Watery Depths’ – more in the style of a localized, wistfully dreamy musing on a Civil War era witch’s fate than scary Blair Witch Project fright. The ethereal, apparitional voice of the native Sussex singer Hannah Lewis wells up from the depths of a punishment ducking to not so much haunt but air a veiled, soaring lament. Sussex has its fair share of innocents’ accused of witchcraft, although there’s little evidence that many such victims were put to death; the exception being Martha Bruff and Ann Hoswell, ordered by the Mayor of Rye to be drowned – I’m not sure if this fate was carried out. Whatever the inspiration, this is folksy pastoral enchantment of English horror soundtracks, Hampshire & Foat, Sandy Denny, Sproatly Smith and Clannad’s airy mystical Sherwood Forest atmospherics.
Lewis is featured again on the seafarers’ plaint, ‘The Sea Captain’; the soaring voiced guest channeling Denny longingly casting out lovelorn hopes and promises in the hope of reuniting with a lost at sea lover: “I’d sell my soul to the waves below, to reach you”. Perhaps throwing herself into the tumult waters of the shipwreck coast (Seaford being, apparently, a renowned spot back when Tennyson’s penned such tragedies as the ‘The Wreck’; the locals, rather splendidly known as ‘Seaford shags’, had a reputation for swooping in like gannets on such disasters-at-sea), Lewis’ sorrowful yearns prove effective over the folksy music if Phantom Power era Super Fury Animals, C Duncan and Fairport Convention.
The brothers’ dual guitar signatures of the entwined, the picked and the brassy resonating have previously been expanded upon by a modest, softly orchestrated guest list of strings and additional instruments. In this case we have Will Calderbank on cello, Becca Wright on violins, Marcas Hamblett on trumpet and Owen Gillham on banjo ebow. With some recurring faces this quartet offer a complimentary, sympathetic and spiralling classical verve to the sound. However, the latter, Mr. Gillham, invokes an English version of Americana and country music wherever he pops up – a shade or Roger McGuinn. But going through the most musical changes, ‘So Breaks Tomorrow’ pictures the Archers Of Loaf through a psychedelic lens, whilst ‘An Easier Time’ travels back to the Tudor court as reimagined by a Blue Hawaii invoked Beach Boys, Fairfield Parlor and the Incredible String Band.
On the way across this seascape there’s a charmed dalliance with the mythical ‘Knucker’ water dragon of the sands of Lynminister, Binstead, Lancing, Shoreham and Worthing (named, I’m informed, after the holes this beast leaves behind); a birdsong rustic stirred imaging of the long abandoned mill hamlet of Tidemills; and, what sounds like, a motor-board powered lilted survey of the River Ouse, which runs alongside and through many of this album’s beauty spots, cutting through the South Downs.
A loving tribute, romantic cartography and healing process, Littoral States provides an alternative pathway from another age; a world away from the vacuous self-absorption of popular culture and the distractions of the internet. It’s a wonderful, magical, and for the most part reassuring, gentle gradient landscape that the brothers dream up; tailoring nostalgia and influences into something picturesque, peaceable but above all, moving. Folklore from a recent past is woven into much older geological layers, with the emphasis on the element of water; acting as the source, the road that connects the stopover on this West and East Sussex travelogue photo album. It’s good to have them back in the fold, so to speak, waxing lyrical and dreamily envisioning such beautiful escapism.
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