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Richard Skelton

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The Inward Circles, “Belated Movements for an Unsanctioned Exhumation August 1st 1984” (Corbel Stone Press, 2015)

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I can always count on Richard Skelton to find the strangest and most unexpected inspirations for his albums and he does not disappoint me with his latest: Belated Movements is largely based upon the “Lindow Man,” a well-preserved body found in a peat bog in the ’80s. As far as ancient bog bodies go, Lindow Man surely ranks among the most hapless, having met a violent (possibly ritualistic) death by being strangled AND having his throat cut, then getting freeze-died and displayed in a museum two thousand years later. Given that base material, it is hardly surprising that Movements is a much more sadness-steeped affair than any of Skelton’s other recent work, resembling nothing less than an atypically industrial-damaged and time-stretched requiem.

I have to admit that I was a bit caught off-guard by this album for a number of reasons. The primary one is that it plunges wholeheartedly back into the free-floating melancholy that characterized much of Richard’s earlier work. His more recent work has not exactly been cheery, but his career trajectory has thus far largely been away from gloom and towards something more timeless, vibrant, and organic (albeit with some exceptions, of course). Also, Belated Movements does not particularly sound like an evolution or continuation of The Inward Circles’ debut; rather, it feels kind of like an unrelated one-off project. The only real thread linking the two is that they focus on Skelton’s more long-form compositions. In fact, Belated Movements even raises the bar in that regard, dividing its hour-long running time into just three pieces.

The first and longest piece, “Petition for Reinterment,” is the album’s funerary centerpiece. Structurally, it is deceptively simple, as it is based primarily upon an endlessly repeating two-note cello or double-bass drone, though that framework eventually dissolves completely (just like the skeleton of a bog man!). Later, however, it reappears somewhat changed and essentially carries on to form the basis of the second piece (“To Your Fox-Skin Chorus”) as well. 

The stated theme of “Petition” is “decay and renewal” and those transformations are largely where the piece’s beauty lies: not much happens melodically at all, but the glacially ebbing and flowing swells undergo some fascinating dynamic and textural changes over the course of the nearly 30-minute running time. I was actually expecting an escalating rotting and rusting dissonance a la Michael Gordon’s deeply unsettling score for Decasia based upon Skelton’s own description of the album, but instead Richard’s bowed strings get increasing overloaded and blown-out sounding, as well as embellished with some grindingly metallic textures and quavering dissonances. It all gets quite heavy and nightmarish by the time it reaches its crescendo. That said, it is quite a slow-burning and nuanced piece, so it takes some focused attention to fully appreciate its dark majesty. Without headphones or high volume, it loses a lot of its power.

The shorter “To Your Fox-Skin Chorus” is not radically different, but sounds a lot more metallic and industrial: there is a constant looping throb and some of Skelton’s bowed strings have an atypically harsh and more reverberant texture, like they were recorded in an empty parking garage or factory. Those more menacing elements are balanced by something that sounds like recurring classical horn loop that makes the piece feel like a Ravel performance bleeding into a noise show held in a sewer or cavern, which is quite an appealing niche. 

Eventually, “Chorus” segues into the closing “Canis, Lynx, Ursus,” which makes Belated Movements feel like one single epic piece rather than three discrete ones. “Canis” ultimately divulges quite a bit from the rest of the album, however, as its slow-motion bowed strings gradually blossom into a somber, descending piano motif. To my ears, Skelton lays on the sadness a bit too thick for his own good, but he almost overcomes that fundamental problem by embellishing the central melody with a periphery that is a singularly Richard Skelton-esque tour de force: a churning thicket of moaning and howling strings and sharp harmonics that gradually swells to a roaring intensity. Sadly, it never gets quite loud enough to fully drown out the piano, but it is still quite a visceral and beautiful way to end the album.

As far as recent Richard Skelton albums go, this is solid, but it falls a bit short of his truly top-shelf material: there is nothing on Belated Movements that comes close to rivaling pieces like the instantly gratifying, stone-cold brilliance of Nimrod‘s “Two Opposed Leaves” or Succession‘s “Relics.” Also, the oppressive sadness of “Canis, Lynx, Ursus” drags down an otherwise spectacular piece—if not the entire album, given how the three sections blur together. 

That said, Skelton has long been one of my favorite artists, so I basically expect him to exclusively churn out masterpieces forever, which is completely unreasonable. While I do not expect that mindset to change anytime soon, I can certainly accept that it colors my judgment somewhat pessimistically at times. Despite my grumblings, Belated Movements is a perfectly fine album and takes an ambitious stylistic detour, as this is an unusually long-form and melodically minimalist album and I always love to see Skelton trying new things rather than repeating himself. New fans would be better served by starting elsewhere, but longtime fans will definitely find plenty to enjoy here (if “enjoy” is truly the right word for elegiac meditations on the fox as psychopomp or the extinction of the lynx).

Listen here.

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*AR, “Diagrams for the Summoning of Wolves” (Corbel Stone Press, 2015)

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Being a rabid Richard Skelton fan, I was initially heartbroken when this release sold out before I could get my hands on it, but now that I have the digital version I feel quite a bit better. As far as Skelton albums go, this is a comparatively minor one. Also, it sounds weirdly like a solo album: while collaborator Autumn Richardson is present in name, her usual vocals are nowhere to be found. Consisting of just a single 27-minute piece, Diagrams is a likeable, if very slow-burning, drone work built upon a characteristically groaning, melancholy string motif that casts off a (characteristically) glittering spray of harmonics. 

Compared to last year’s The Inward Circles album, Diagrams admittedly feels like a step back into somewhat well-trod territory. However, it is territory that Skelton basically owns and he ratchets up the intensity a bit more than usual this time around, so fans will probably still find plenty to enjoy about this brief dispatch.

As is traditional for Skelton and Richardson, Diagrams for the Summoning of Wolves has some very deep conceptual roots. Like Wolf Notes and Succession before it, Diagrams is inspired by the dwindling wildness of their home turf of southwest Cumbria, but with an interesting twist. Whereas *AR’s previous albums were intended as meditations upon what was lost and what someday might return, Diagrams is almost exactly what its title suggests: a ritual to summon back the departed wolves. 

Sadly, no information is provided as to where this ritual originated or its historical success rate, only that Richard and Autumn somehow transformed the hand gestures, scents, and markings of said ritual into music. When viewed in that light, the music actually makes a lot of sense: “Hand Gestures, Scents, and Markings” feels much more like the gnarled, steadily intensifying soundtrack to an ancient pagan ritual than a mere modern composition (which would presumably get to the point somewhat quickly rather than purposely simmering in relative stasis).

The music itself generally sticks to Skelton’s expected aesthetic of somber, droning bowed strings amidst a prickly thicket of creaks, squeals, and sharp harmonics, but there are some fresh divergences. For one, “Gestures” is certainly longer than any other single piece previously recorded by *AR and its long, slow build is also something of a departure from the duo’s usual fare. 

Also, Skelton and Richardson augment their normal sound with some field recordings this time around, most notably with the distant wolf sounds that periodically drift into the quietly brooding opening minutes. When it finally fully blossoms (after 15 minutes or so), however, “Gestures” exhibits a surprising degree of both density and ferocity—there are quite a lot of heavy, grinding metallic textures bolstering Skelton’s churning strings. For a duo as contemplative as Richard and Autumn, Diagrams unexpectedly feels like an album meant to be played quite loud, as only then does it seem like a beautiful, violent catharsis rather than an atypically stretched drone-piece.

Notably, it took me a lot longer to warm to Diagrams than either of *AR’s previous releases, as it occupies a curious sort of no-man’s land for an album: it is too slow-moving to quite work as a headphone album and too fixated on a single motif to quite work as a “song.” Instead, it just kind of feels like ambient music until it fully catches fire: easy to ignore for quite a long time, then gloriously, unexpectedly, and attention-grabbingly heavy. The pay-off is certainly quite powerful and satisfying when it eventually occurs, but it is not quite rapturous enough to surpass either of the duo’s more concise and instantly gratifying previous albums. As such, Diagrams is an EP that will primarily only appeal to the already converted, though I ultimately enjoyed it quite a bit myself (as one of those converts, of course).

Listen here.

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The Inward Circles, “Nimrod is Lost in Orion and Osyris in the Doggestarre” (Corbel Stone Press, 2014)

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Richard Skelton has a long history of shifting monikers, unusual concepts, and stylistic evolutions, but this latest project still came as a bit of a surprise to me, as it does not particularly sound like a Richard Skelton album at all. Not at first, anyway. Rather, it sounds a bit like a warmer variation on classic Lustmord or one of Steve Roach’s space-themed albums—a far cry from Skelton’s vibrant and organic signature blend of bow-scrapes and rich, shimmering harmonics. 

After a few listens, however, it becomes evident that Skelton’s aesthetic is still perfectly intact, but has been slowed down and stretched to something approximating geologic time (appropriate, given his well-documented non-musical interests). While Nimrod is definitely not representative of what Richard historically does best, it is nevertheless a deep and absorbing listen, boasting at least one piece that is probably as great as anything in the space music canon.

There are many aspects of Skelton’s artistry that I find endearing, but one of the less obvious ones is that it feels like his recent music is only the tip of an intriguingly cryptic and deeply personal iceberg. I also appreciate that he only seems to surface these days when he has something new and unusual to say. Exactly what he is saying, of course, usually remains a pleasant mystery to me, but he certainly cannot be faulted for failing to provide enough supporting information. 

As with many recent Skelton efforts, Nimrod‘s music is closely intertwined with text—in this case, an evocative book of re-purposed literary quotations (Da Vinci, Christina Rossetti, Rilke, etc.), close-up photography of bark patterns, and word-collages rooted in detourned forestry documents. Surprisingly, given the album’s title and the actual music, the writings are mostly a fairly earthbound (albeit eclectic) series of meditations on trees, light, shadow, the sea, and solitude. The album and song titles, on the other hand, are all tied to the writings of English polymath Sir Thomas Browne, so I suspect everything ultimately traces back to him in some way.

Musically, Nimrod generally resembles a Richard Skelton album being played at a much slower speed and deeper pitch. I have no clue how the album was constructed, but there is little that can be readily identified as violin or bowed guitar, though the sounds could have certainly originated from either (and then been laptopped into unrecognizability). 

In a more specific sense, most of Nimrod sounds like warm, layered, slow-moving drone swells made from a cello or double-bass. That is certainly pleasant, but the album’s best pieces merely use that as the starting point for something a bit more unique and mesmerizing. “Ancient Arithmetic of the Hand,” for example, augments its dreamy thrum with a ghostly, quavering haze and a deep, insistent throb, while “Glimpses Of The Empyreal Light” sounds like an older-style Skelton piece beset by ominous, subterranean shudders.

Nimrod‘s two highlights are even more radical in their transformation of Skelton’s aesthetic. “Two Opposed Leaves At The Root” is the album’s masterpiece, weirdly reminding me of Aphex Twin’s wheezing, lurching NIN remix (in name, at least) “At The Heart Of It All,” which is not at all something I would normally expect to be referencing in regards to a Richard Skelton album. 

Remarkably, Skelton manages to one-up Richard James though, as the pulse of “Two Leaves” transcends mere rhythm to sound like something enormous and metal being endlessly bent and crushed by powerful exterior forces. I have never heard anything else quite like it and it is absolutely beautiful in its context. “And In Their Groves Of The Sun This Was A Fit Number” is not quite that stunning or unique, but works on a similarly grand scale. In fact, there is even some similar crunching, but it is quite distant and strangely soothing as it is slowly enveloped by the piece’s warm, engulfing roar.

I would not necessarily say that there are any weak pieces at all on Nimrod, but the album’s lengthiest work (“An Art to Make Dust of All Things”) seems comparatively uninspired to me, as its cold emptiness and deep metallic swells seem too much like the territory of previous space-minded ambient artists without any substantial improvement upon the formula (though it was bit surprising to hear a (buried) percussion loop). It is a perfectly fine piece, but it just does not feel like it belongs on this particular album by this particular artist. In all other respects, however, Nimrod is an absolutely wonderful, beautifully realized, and unexpected album (and “Two Leaves” is easily one of the finest pieces in Skelton’s entire discography).

Listen here.

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*AR, “Succession” (Corbel Stone, 2013)

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While Richard Skelton has long been one of my favorite artists, he has not released anything new in a while that has captivated me quite like he did the first time that I heard him. That is not to say that he has experienced any sort of creative decline or anything, but he is definitely an artist who tends do one specific thing brilliantly, which regrettably tends to yield diminishing returns with increased familiarity. With this follow-up to their Wolf Notes collaboration, however, Skelton and Autumn Richardson alchemically transform some of their previous recordings into something quite new and unexpected.

2011’s Wolf Notes, Richard and Autumn’s first album together, was a bit of a complicated album for me to process. I certainly liked it when it came out (and still do today), but it felt like a bit of a lateral move for Skelton rather than a clear step forward. On one hand, Autumn’s vocals made Richard’s music seem much more warm, human, and accessible. On the other hand, the presence of a vocalist (by necessity) deflected focus from Skelton’s heaving swells and creaks of bowed strings and their vibrant harmonic wake. The reason that I bring all that up is quite simple: Succession is culled from the exact same recordings as Wolf Notes. In fact, the opening title track sounds like it is essentially a reprise of Wolf Notes‘ closing “Return.”

The reason for that is a bit convoluted and wordy, as there is a lot of backstory and conceptual artistry going on behind the scenes. The short version is this: in late 2011, Richard and Autumn returned to the place (Ulpha) where they had recorded the raw material for Wolf Notes in 2009. In contemplating how the Cumbrian landscape had changed and how the differences in accumulated layers of sediment maintain a natural record of a place’s history, the duo were inspired to view their own music like the place that spawned it.

Consequently, Succession returns to a very similar place musically: a place in which some things are the same and some are different, but the raw material is the same as ever. The actual songs are just the tip of the iceberg though, as Skelton and Richardson’s immersion into their surroundings went much deeper than mere philosophical grist for another album: the physical copy of Succession included two related art/poetry pamphlets about the landscape, as well as the self-explanatory A List of Probable Flora. While my interest in both poetry and botany is minimal at best, I have to admire the depth and scope of *AR’s dedication to their themes.

As for the music itself, Succession is mostly just Wolf Notes Redux, only better and more long-form in nature. Aside from the angelic vocal swells of “Succession,” which are very Richardson-centric, most of the album focuses very squarely on Skelton’s shimmering, churning strings. In general, the mood is a melancholy/bittersweet one (particularly on “Wolfshou”) and the structure is very loop-like and drone-inspired: *AR are quite content to allow a single motif to slowly fade in, then slowly fade out 15 or 20 minutes later with only the most subtle enhancements made along the way. 

That said, the motifs in question are inevitably quite rich, singular, and visceral, which means that they never get boring or too mired in brooding. Skelton is a genius at assembling texturally dynamic loops that feel simultaneously organic, physical, and mesmerizingly vibrant—a primal, undulating thicket of prickly harmonics and grinding strings will never, ever seem like navel-gazing mopery.

Nowhere does Skelton highlight that singular talent better than on the closing “Relics,” which is an absolute masterpiece and like nothing else I have heard from him to date. Structurally, it is not wildly different from the rest of the album, but it somehow feels much more like a locked-groove than usual (albeit a simultaneously warm, grinding, and achingly beautiful one). It is not entirely a “locked-groove” though: as it progresses, it seems to get slower and deeper while a quivering nimbus of harmonics forms above the groaning, see-sawing strings…and then it all just gradually fades away. Quite simply, it is a perfect, endlessly absorbing piece of music—I could listen to it forever.

I would say that the presence of “Relics” alone makes Succession absolutely essential, but Richardson and Skelton have also released a companion album (Echoless) that features an extended, unabridged version of the same piece (as well as a similarly lengthened version of “Succession”). I have no idea which is better, but I would err on the side of saying that more “Relics” is better than less “Relics.” In that sense, the nod goes to Echoless. Otherwise, Succession (and Echoless as well, I suppose) is yet another fine Skelton/*AR release, but nothing that eclipses or departs dramatically from Richard’s equally fine back catalog. So, in essence, the most withering critique that I can muster here is “Richard Skelton is as characteristically great as ever, but he only surprised me with one song.” I think I can live with that.

Listen here.

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*AR, “Wolf Notes” (Type/Sustain-Release, 2011)

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Nobody that has been following Richard Skelton’s career thus far will be astonished to learn that he has added yet another new guise to his stable of projects (A Broken Consort, Carousell, etc.), but the actual content of Wolf Notes is a bit of a dramatic departure. For one, it is a collaboration (with his wife, Autumn Richardson) rather than a solo endeavor. Secondly, it is fairly vocal-centric, which caught me a bit off-guard. In fact, it took me several listens to fully warm to it, as some of my favorite Skelton-esque qualities are downplayed. In time, however, I grew to appreciate *AR as a uniquely innocent and anachronistic entity all its own.

Wolf Notes is paradoxically an album that is both otherworldly and singularly natural, drawing its inspiration from the landscape surrounding the small Cumbrian village of Ulpha. While “Ulpha” is descended from Norse words meaning “the hill frequented by wolves” (explaining the album’s title), there is nothing sinister or feral happening here, though there is a feeling of primal timelessness that seems thematically appropriate: Wolf Notes simply sounds like it was conceived and recorded in a world that is temporally and geographically very far from the one most of us inhabit. That fits quite comfortably with Skelton’s previous work: despite being deeply emotive and “human,” it seems to be invariably inspired by places where there aren’t many people around and that look pretty much exactly the same as they did a thousand years ago.

The five songs function as movements within a single work, as the same themes recur and evolve as the album progresses. One lilting wordless melody in particular (sung by Autumn) serves as the album’s central motif, but it doesn’t appear in every single song (though it is frequently hinted at or deftly danced around). As for the underlying music, Skelton stays quite firmly within his area of expertise, weaving a groaning and shimmering multilayered web of treated violin drones. I have always loved his playing and he is characteristically brilliant here, creating a vibrant and prickly halo of microtones and string buzz all around his slow-motion chamber melancholia. Incidentally, a “wolf note” is a type of dissonance, giving the album title a dual meaning. I have no idea whether or not Skelton consciously uses them here though (obviously, it would be an egregious and unforgivable thematic faux pas if he didn’t).

The heightened sustain, reverb, and spectral after-images enhancing Richard’s bowed strings are *AR’s only conspicuous nods to modern recording, as Richardson’s voice stays fairly pure and unmanipulated throughout. Also, Skelton generally uses the studio to make himself sound “hyper-natural” rather than less natural. That difference is important. Similarly, there is also a conspicuous devotion to old-fashioned virtues like patience, clarity, and simplicity here, as the entire album unfolds at an unhurried pace that accumulates power and momentum simply through inventive repetition, variation, and thoughtfully constructed harmonies.

I think I still prefer some of Skelton’s darker and grittier solo work to *AR, but this is definitely an inspired and elegant new facet to his oeuvre. Actually, in some ways, Wolf Notes might be the most radical thing that he has done yet: there is a refreshingly un-cynical embrace of purity, place, nature, and raw beauty here that is squarely in opposition to our post-modern, post-everything culture (the Sustain-Release version of this album comes with a chapbook of poems about Urpha that even includes a list of native grasses). Skelton has certainly touched upon all those things before, but the addition of Autumn’s bittersweet voice makes it all seem a bit more vulnerable and human. Maybe being defiantly pastoral will be the new punk.

Listen here.

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Richard Skelton, “Landings” (Type, 2009)

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Richard Skelton has been quietly amassing a small but deeply devoted following for the last five years with a series of beautifully packaged self-released albums under a constantly changing series of guises (the best-known of which being A Broken Consort).  With this, his second release for Type Records under his own name, he seems poised for much wider recognition as one of the most vital and singular artists in underground music. This is one of the most beautiful and essential albums that I’ve heard this year.

Richard Skelton occupies an unusual stylistic niche somewhere between classical music and drone, as Landings seems to be largely the product of unspecified bowed instruments and a looping pedal. I suppose Marielle Jakobsons’ Darwinsbitch project is something of a kindred spirit, though Skelton’s work is meditative and profoundly melancholy, whereas Jakobsons’ Ore is intense and harrowing. However, they both conjure almost supernaturally powerful, haunting, and enigmatic aural monoliths from mere wood, steel, and horsehair. Both are lucky that the witchcraze is a distant memory.

For the most part, Landings is built around achingly beautiful and impossibly sad beds of strings. That is not especially novel on its own, but no one else that I’ve heard has done it in such a visceral and vibrant way. The magic lies in the details, such as the squirming, shuddering bow-work in “Noon River Woods.”  These 12 songs are all superficially gentle and hypnotically repeating, but they invariably crackle with creaks, bow scrapes, harmonics, echoes, moans, chirping birds, and all sorts of other evocative elements that are tangential to the central themes. The songs themselves, while gorgeous, seem to be merely a foundation for the mesmerizing, shimmering nimbus around them.

The album has a very timeless and organic feeling to it, which is likely a direct consequence of Skelton’s unusual recording techniques. The bulk of the material included here was improvised live over a period of four years in various remote locations throughout Northern England: on hillsides, along streams and rivers, in deep forests, etc. 

Moors, however,  seem to be a particular favorite haunt: the now sold-out version of the album released through Skelton’s Sustain-Release imprint included a book of his writings on the West Pennine Moors of Lancashire, a place that has been of considerable import and inspiration for Richard in the past. Thankfully, he is not entirely a process purist, as the raw beauty captured during those excursions is later sculpted and augmented with overdubbing. As a result, many of the pieces manage to sound simultaneously alive and flowing, yet deliberate and artfully layered (no easy feat). At times I think the production might be a little cleaner than it should be, but I suspect that may be a necessity for capturing every single little nuance, which is an essential element of Skelton’s work.

Landings definitely sounds like the sort of album that takes four years to make: there is nothing weak or half-conceived here. While it might be his best work yet, it is by no means a dramatic leap forward, as the few other albums that I’ve heard exhibit much of the same ineffable sadness and focused intensity. 
There are several obvious standout moments, such as the echoing and lurching divinity of “Undertow” or the spectral pulsing of “Voice of the Book,” but Landings is one of those albums where my favorite song is destined to be in a constant state of flux. This is a thoroughly complex, visionary, and unique work. 

Listen here.