Under his pseudonym Glåsbird, British artist and composer Harry Towell has been exploring remote geographic locations as far afield as Siberia. For his new album, Fenlands, he returns closer to home, exploring the low-lying fenlands surrounding his sleepy Lincolnshire village.
Fenscapes is being released this month (16th November) on Towell’s own Whitelabrecs, which he founded in 2016. The label has led to him working with “150 artists from across the world, curating a collection of Ambient, modern classical, Electro-Acoustic, and cinematic Electronica.”
I was initially drawn to this album through a reclaimed flatland connection. I live close to the Somerset Levels, which, like the Fenlands, are reclaimed land drained via a complex system of drainage channels and pumping stations. I frequently walk along old footpaths across this landscape, whose long views provide a peaceful escape from the hustle and bustle of market towns. These flatlands attracted Neolithic and Bronze Age settlers, and walking across this landscape often feels like you’ve crossed a portal where time stops, something that the psychogeography of Fenlands shares.
From the artwork to his ambient compositions, Fenscapes reveals a surprisingly deep richness to these mysteriously flat and minimal landscapes.
From the album note:
Covering nearly 1,500 square miles across parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, the Fens now serve as a highly fertile agricultural zone, producing significant quantities of grains and vegetables. Despite these changes, the area retains its unique ecological character, with a landscape shaped by its historical marshland origins.
Harry set out to visit and explore the sights and sounds of the six nearest fen roads to his home, including Rippingale, Dunsby, Haconby, Morton, Dyke and Bourne. Many of these consisted of long, straight, narrow roads, often worn and dusty. Some were dead ends. Either side of the roads were flat landscape views, stretching many miles out into expanses of open nothingness. Yet just as had been reported in history, they were full of wildlife with crickets, skylarks and owls were quietly thriving alongside a path less travelled. This album shares the results of Harry’s time spent walking in and appreciating these unsung local spaces, aiming to produce a work of art that might raise their cultural profile if only by a small amount.
For the artwork, Harry bought an 8 x 8-inch canvas, initially intending to paint a typical fenland landscape from one of the photos he’d taken during the visits. However, he had an idea to use leaves and flowers to rub onto the canvas – leaves, daisies and buttercups were used to depict the land, whereas white and lilac flowers were used to paint the sky. The album marks the very first Whitelabrecs vinyl release in a limited run of 100 copies.
Bandcamp (Digital/CD/Vinyl): https://whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com/album/fenscapes
