matthew shenton [there are no birds here]

'bleached memories' was self released in 2023. 

​

In 2019 I picked up an old slide projector from a charity shop and a bundle of random 35mm slides from eBay. I was unprepared for the powerful emotions and extreme feelings of responsibility that these purchases would create.

​

I returned to the slides In 2023 to explore both their physical properties and their potential for artistic inspiration. I altered the slides by adding household cleaner to them, before scanning and cropping the results to make a visual piece.

​

For the compositions the only sound source used was the projector itself. Various clicks, clunks and whirs of the mechanism along with hidden sounds picked up by a sonic sniffer were sampled, looped and manipulated digitally.

​

The result is bleached memories.

​

You can read a review of the album and find out more about the creation process  in my blog.
 

Available to stream and purchase on bandcamp.

Fourey-Leet was created to mark my live appearance at ExBuryMental 9 which took place on January 25th 2023, in Bury St Edmunds.

Side A: Allus is the recording of a rehearsal for my set. A small motor excites the strings of a prepared guitar, with the signal then passed through a fuzz/distortion/tremolo chain. Foraged objects are used to rub, scrape and tweak the strings to create a unique improvised performance. A drone underpins the shifting harmonics. A camera timer was placed on top of a homemade plate reverb to mark the passing of time.

Side B: Nivva is a quieter improvisation using tape loops to create delayed rhythms and different foraged items to manipulate the prepared guitar.

​

Available to stream and purchase on bandcamp

Hume was self-released in 2021.

 

Taking its inspiration from archaic words historically used in the county of Suffolk, Hume was a hymn to local dialects and the many ways that the rural and industrial meet in Suffolk.

​

Mire -drum is a composition that looked to recreate the industrial sounds of the Harwich docks as heard from across the river at Shotley.

Made using a Gak SX, an SG copy with 5 strings, a violin with three strings, Kaossilator 2, Volca Modular, Volca FM, Volca Sample, SQ-1 sequencer, Monotron, Monotron Duo, Monotron Delay, a Yamaha Portasound keyboard, a spinning top, field recordings and various homemade spring instruments. These were all run through various cheap pedals (including an evil homemade fuzz box) and the Korg NTS-1.

 

Available to stream and purchase on bandcamp

Another Ruined Landscape was released on Brighton's Hream Recordings on cassette and CD in December 2020.

 

Album blurb for the release:

Graffiti on a railway underpass catches your eye; ‘Another Ruined Landscape’ it proclaims. Looking across at the neighbouring industrial estate, you can see its point.

 

The nearby public footpath channels you between tightly packed industrial units. Wire fencing protects you from skips overflowing with broken glass, blue drums of unlabeled waste and decaying machinery. Extractor fans drone and drip and whir and groan. Wraiths of snagged plastic sheeting claw at you as you pass. Another Ruined Landscape, indeed.

 

The footpath expels you on to the raised bank of the river Stour; a natural barrier and border between the Southfolk and the East Saxons. Peering through the haze on your right you can see the distant cranes at Felixstowe as they pierce the heavens. Twisting your gaze left brings a pillbox into focus; open to the elements and gorged with beer cans. Nearby lies the White Bridge sluice as it rests; resolute and impassable. Another Ruined Landscape.

 

Finally, you drop your eyes and marvel at what the Stour has revealed at low tide. Unnavigable channels and creeks and rills and glorious, glorious mud flats. Birds rise and scream and fall and rest among its flotsam. Halyards clank, clank, clank their unsteady rhythms. A near-empty train clacks along with a solitary, masked, passenger staring blankly out at the bleak beauty of Another Ruined Landscape.

 

Drink it in.

 

It is yours.

​

Inspiration provided by the landscape of the Shotley Peninsula, and the vanishing East coast.

 

Album cover image taken and manipulated by Matt Shenton. Text and layout by Darren Holloway.

 

Available to stream and purchase on bandcamp.

riverrun was released on Brighton's Hream Recordings in 2023.

riverrun is an album inspired by the glorious route of the River Stour as it rises in Suffolk and flows to meet the Orwell at the tip of the Shotley Peninsula. The titles are locations found along the route, and include some locations that are no longer present due to coastal erosion and the shifting of sand banks.

 

The album also references Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (from where its title was taken) in that the composition looks at Giambattista Vico's cyclical view of history and how the Stour's flow and place in history mirrors Vico's theory that society moves from chaos and proceeds on through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases before returning to chaos.

 

Album cover image by Matt Shenton. Text and layout by Darren Holloway.

 

Available to stream and purchase on bandcamp.

Stryance was released on the Courier label in 2022.

​

The idea for Stryance came to me in February 2022 whilst reading a copy of This Luminous Coast by Jules Pretty. Pretty’s book is a visionary look at the history of the East Anglian coastline, written after he walked its 400-mile path over a decade ago. In Chapter 2, he writes about the floods of 1953 where “the sea walls were breached in over 1000 places, and 300 people died in the dark.” The flood hit during the dead of night. People woke up to find their possessions drifting and bumping about by their beds. Waves slicked silently across the land in some places; they exploded through windows in others. It would take days for newspaper reports of the disaster to reach the rest of the country. When the water finally receded, a writhing mass of eels remained.

The chapter is written with a powerful compassion for the tragic loss of life, and captures feelings of isolation, fear, strength, failure, futility and power.

To say that Stryance was inspired by this subject matter would be trite. No one is inspired by such devastating loss. Stryance is, however, informed by Pretty’s writing. About the feelings that gripped me whilst reading his words one afternoon. About pressure constricting and releasing. About lessons not learned.

I needed Stryance to crawl, groan, hiss, drip, spit and spiral. The original sound sources have been chopped, stretched, pressed, spliced, eroded and obliterated. The percussive sounds are recorded tape loops of a child’s spinning top as it repeatedly twists and falls onto contact mics. A homemade hurdy gurdy drones and squeals and clanks. Matrix mixer feedback pierces the gloom. Hiss fades. Silence. Stryance. 

Recorded and arranged between February and May 2022 using various homemade and modified instruments

Mastered by Ed Rome at Slam Door Studios.

​

Cover image by Matt Shenton. 

​

Available to stream and purchase  on bandcamp.

The Drift was released on limited edition tape with accompanying booklet on Falmouth's Dub Cthonic label in 2021. 

​

Album blurb written for the release:

The Suffolk soundscape is intriguing. Its wide, open fields allow the wind to whip and howl across the countryside. The drone of juggernauts trudging along the A14 can be heard for miles.

Tidal rivers slap and churn against riverbanks, before slicing huge swathes of land clean away. The cranes at Felixstowe pierce the heavens as they clang cargo containers to the ground. Apache helicopters circle overhead.

​

there are no birds here tries to make sense of these sounds.

​

Album cover image by Matt Shenton. Text and layout by David Wigglesworth.

​

Available to stream and purchase on bandcamp.

Ulfkell's Land was released on Brighton's Hream Recordings label in 2020.

 

A collection of drones, scrapes and bleeps inspired by the Suffolk landscape.

​

Created on analogue equipment, before being poorly mastered in Ableton Live so that it is both too quiet to hear and yet causes your speakers to crackle and vibrate randomly.

​

Best enjoyed on headphones, whilst being buffeted by a cold easterly wind as it rips across a vast empty field in which your fruitless search for a footpath has been caused either by an entitled landowner denying its existence, or because it has long ago been consumed by the German Ocean.

​

Made using Korg Volca FM, Volca Modular, Monotron, Monotron Duo, Monotron Delay, NTS-1, Disorder Generator, contact mics, field recordings and iPad SAMPL.

​

Cover image taken by Matt Shenton. Text and layout by Darren Holloway.

​

Available to stream and purchase  on bandcamp.