Hawksmoor

British musician James McKeown takes inspiration from dream research, the occult, and early electronic music for his eerie, cinematic solo project Hawksmoor. He launched the project in early 2018 with the imaginary hauntological soundtrack Hawksmoor, a set of hypnotic, Moog synthesizer-based pieces about a group of churches in London noted for their unique, esoteric architecture. While still utilizing synths, drum machines, and tape loops, subsequent Hawksmoor albums, like 2020's Methods of Dreaming, incorporated spacy guitar textures. With 2023's Telepathic Heights, Hawksmoor evoked German kosmische music from the 1970s. Before he created Hawksmoor in 2017, Bristol-based James McKeown played in several bands and projects, including Hi-Fiction Science, a progressive rock-influenced group which formed in 2008. He also released a fake Christian acid folk album as Frugal Puritan, a melancholy singer/songwriter LP as the Dead Astronaut, and a handful of limited experimental recordings under his own name. He then began making mainly instrumental music inspired by Nicholas Hawksmoor, an English Baroque architect active during the 17th and 18th centuries. The self-titled album Hawksmoor appeared on Environmental Studies in early 2018, with its songs named after specific churches that bear esoteric shapes such as pyramids and obelisks rather than traditional Christian symbols. Live at the Cube, Bristol, recorded as part of Environmental Studies' Research #1 event, appeared in 2019. Second album 201984 was a colder, more industrial-leaning effort in reaction to Brexit and geopolitical instability. Methods of Dreaming, the first Hawksmoor release for the Spun Out of Control label, was titled after a paper written by Prof. R.J. Bennett of the Milton Keynes Institute for Neurological Dream Research regarding his investigations about consciousness and lucid dreaming. Concrete Island, a remote collaboration with horror synth artist the Heartwood Institute (Jonathan Sharp), was released in 2021. This preceded On Prescription, a solo album about the side effects of oncology. Hawksmoor then released the J.G. Ballard-inspired Crystal World EP as part of the Castles in Space label's Subscription Library series. Saturnalia, an album of "electronic folk horror," was released by Library of the Occult in 2022. The weightless, crystalline Head Coach appeared on Spun Out of Control, marking the label's first CD release. Telepathic Heights, channeling Krautrock artists such as Cluster, Michael Rother, and Ash Ra Tempel, arrived on Soul Jazz Records in 2023.
© Paul Simpson /TiVo