Released: 18/08/23
Curated by the excellent Hamburg label Bureau B, Gespensterland (‘Ghostland’) is a compilation bringing together some of the luminaries of a small, contemporary underground network of artists and projects with poetic, mysterious names such as Brannten Schnüre, Baldruin, Kirschstein, Freundliche Kreisel and Balint Brösel, who operate in the margins and intersections of German folklore and experimental electronics. Ghostly, fecund and oneiric, the incredible tracks featured here impress on the listener (or this listener, at least) the feeling that they have been transported to a kind of sonically charged primeval woodland, and indeed, this strange brew of ancient and modern fits within the notion of hauntology – Jacques Derrida’s concept which was notably taken up by the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher, who believed that hauntological artists (for example, The Caretaker, whose work would fit very well in this record) are “haunted by a paradoxical nostalgia”. But an affinity with the more recherché facets of deconstruction are certainly not required to enjoy this record, for the intoxicatingly strange gems hidden within are reward enough.