The final night of my tour for Pastoral culminated in a performance at a cinema in Walthamstow called Mirth, Marvel and Maud. As soon as I walked into the building, I felt an overwhelming sense of pressure change. I instantly felt anxious and strange. There was a staff member setting up, so I asked, “Is this place haunted?” They looked at me a little taken aback.
I had been struggling with postnatal depression from the birth of my first child in 2016 and had recurring dreams about a ghost that would possess me and levitate my body violently. After that gig in Walthamstow, I was chatting with my friend Alexander Tucker, also known as Microcorps, who was telling me a ghost story completely randomly. It was then that I realized the connection between all these feelings and anxieties and thoughts – my next album would be something to do with ghosts.
I began researching the technology of ghost-hunting and discovered many connections between the development of audio technology and the spiritualist movement. From there, there’s a whole genetic pathway of music going through people like Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, and the Radiophonic Workshop – those kinds of sounds and machines that have a heritage in something supernatural. Even the women’s rights movement was influenced by early spiritualism because of the role women played in spiritualism. The movement gave women a platform and power that I could relate to – the power of transfiguration; the ability to freely go into another place, whether it was a spirit world or a recessive place within themselves where they could scream and be crazy. Where else could they have done that in that era?
What ended up coming out on Black Dog was an emotional response – an excavation of my own fears and lifelong psychological state. But to make the initial connection between technology, women’s rights, and ghosts? It blew my mind!
