With essay insert + 5 photographic prints
New psychogeographic imaginings from The Dengie Hundred, exploring the conceptual significance of lammas land (an archaic law making otherwise private land open access public space) and its relationship to experiences of the city and its surrounding hinterlands. The lammas land in question here is specifically that of Walthamstow Marshes, and much of the record is pieced together from sounds culled from exploring that area, which were then allied to minimal guitar figures and seemingly originless electronics. Marshes and wetlands are unusual spaces, bordering our worlds but teeming with life that's rarely human, caught between the city and the countryside, a hidden gap only partly accessible. It works well as a metaphor, the ghostly space-in-between being a good way to understand the music made by The Dengie Hundred, sounds communicated from the void of memory or a dream, just out of reach but the impression of its touch indelibly felt. Strangely, there's a Bill Callahan lyric that comes to mind here: "the conversation is like the beating taken in a dream, where no real blows are landed, the only harm is in memory". There's no harm in Lammas Land, but it does linger on long after its 40 minutes are up, one of the many voices of the living city.
