The Outer Church, Hacker Farm, & The Rewiring Of The English Countryside

'The Outer Church':  A Highly Recommended Compilation

It’s no secret that my musical tastes are fairly varied, but also true that things sometimes go in phases.  So it has been recently.  My current artistic activities have been predominantly sound-tracked by various strands of contemporary and fairly abstract electronica, amongst which are a number of acts new to me.  Several of those have been associated, in one way or another, with Joseph Stannard’s ‘TheOuter Church’ events in Brighton of recent years.

Joseph Stannard (& Familiar)

In so far as this might be regarded as a ‘scene’, (and that really shouldn’t be the best way to assess the work), some common themes might include: a general sense of occult weirdness; an abstracted view of the British countryside; and a sensitivity to the darker strands running through, (sometimes ancient), folk history.  All of that is certainly true of the music of IX Tab and Kemper Norton in particular, both of which I’ve had on repeat play lately.

Those are hardly new ideas and there are also undoubted crossovers with other musicians currently working in the fields of dark ambience or horror soundtrack aesthetics. There’s also a connection with the whole Hauntological theme of recent times, not least through the active participation in ‘Outer Church’ type projects of such acts as Mordant Music and Pye Corner Audio.  Journalists and commentators have often bracketed them within the Hauntological camp, but it goes without saying that such labels are generally of more interest to journalists than to the artists they write about.

In fact, a loose connectedness, and a willingness to work in collaboration, are typical of many of these artists, and perhaps, of the current digital/social media generation in general.  One of the creative nodes who have demonstrated this collective approach, but whose rather more politicised, almost punkish, DIY approach and abrasive aesthetics also set them slightly apart, is Hacker Farm.  They are essentially Farmer Glitch, Kek-W and Bren, (yeah, right), - three individuals with varying pedigrees in experimental and dance music, who now create a kind of bastard rural electronica mostly rooted in noise generation, and often employ instruments comprising salvaged electronics and agricultural junk.  To date they have two official album releases; 2011’s self published ‘Poundland’, and ‘UHF’ from earlier this year.

Based in Yeovil, Somerset, the two really interesting things about HF, apart from the noise they make, are the strand of political subversion running through their work, and a singularly contemporary take on the realities of British rural life.  This is far from the cliché of romantic idyll with which Brits still hypnotise themselves.  Instead, they evoke a more recognisable world of rural unemployment (or casual, cash work), drab market towns denuded of their original economic function, populations priced out of local housing, limited opportunities for what was once called The Working Class, and cultural impoverishment generally.  This is all tied up with a healthy/unhealthy dose of conspiracy theorising which, let’s face it, is never far away, these days.

We’re not talking about protest songs, or indeed, anything resembling the Folk Tradition here at all.  Hacker Farm deal in a brand of post-industrial Noise Art in which those repeated rhythms that exist often resemble the irregular clunks and clattering of failing farm equipment.  Their synthesised atmospheres might call to mind industrial estates, bypasses, power stations, military installations or electro-static interference on surveillance footage, rather than anything traditionally bucolic or verdant.

Within this essentially abstract framework, however, are buried various clues to their underlying agenda.  These can take the form of album or track titles, (‘Poundland’, ‘Deterritorial Army’, ‘Austerity Measures’, etc.), or vocal samples buried within the music, such as the marketplace voicing of domestic dissatisfaction in ‘Ilchester’, or the frankly Situationist diatribe in ‘One, Six, Nein’.  They also carry over into the presentation of Hacker Farm product, be it in the detournement of the Hewlett Packard Logo for their own ident or the packaging of ‘Poundland’ in tatty, recycled CD cases (with a cheeky Oxfam sticker printed on the artwork).  Indeed, by holing up on a disused farm and augmenting their income by brewing and selling rough cider, their collective lifestyle might be said to epitomise some of the very issues they seek to explore.

Hacker Farm: Churning Sound...

I guess all this rather contradicts my stated aim, a few months back, of trying to relate to music primarily in an emotional way.  Certainly, this music does stimulate a number of subjective responses, (mostly fear, disquiet, and alienation, admittedly).  However, it strikes me that, as with much ideas-based art in whatever media, understanding something of the conceptual or theoretical context is pretty fundamental to the whole experience.  I’m not sure I’d have picked up all of the ideas in HF’s work from the music alone, much as I might enjoy listening to it.  Is this a problem?  Probably not.  Ideally, I want any artwork to either move and interest me.  However, in so many cases, and certainly with this kind of stuff, the two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

…And A Bucket Of Noise

The other thing that Hacker Farm make me reflect on is the whole relationship between urban, suburban and rural environments, and how the distinctions between them seem to be blurring.  I live in an inner city, consciously seek out subjects in my immediate environment, and have talked a lot about my own art as being essentially urban in nature.  I’ve also referred on several occasions, to artists who deal mostlywith those liminal territories where town and country once met.  The rurally based but somewhat brutalist work of Hacker Farm seems to relocate sonic motifs and ideas traditionally associated with the city, (such as Situationism), into the English countryside.  It suggests that, in a world of digital connectedness and global economics, and post both Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, any clear distinctions between these physical zones may become increasingly obscure.

Of Particular Relevance:

Hacker Farm, ‘Poundland’, 2011, Self-Published CDR

Hacker Farm, ‘UHF’, 2013, Exotic Pylon Records

Various Artists, ‘The Outer Church’, 2013, Front & Follow

Kemper Norton, ‘Carn’, 2013, Exotic Pylon Records

IX Tab, ‘Spindle & The Bregnut Tree’, 2012, Twiggwytch Recordings

The House In The Woods, ‘Buccolica’, 2013, Exotic Pylon Records

Pye Corner Audio, 'Sleep Games', 2012, Ghostbox

Also Listening To:

Autechre, L-Event, 2013, Warp

The Haxan Cloak, ‘The Haxan Cloak’, 2011, Aurora Borealis

Laurel Halo, ‘Chance Of Rain’, 2013, Hyperdub

Emptyset, ‘Demiurge’, 2011, Subtext

Emptyset, ‘Recur’, 2013, Raster Noton

Oneohtrix Point Never, ‘R Plus 7’, 2013, Warp

The Stranger, ‘Watching Dead Empires In Decay’, 2013, Modern Love

Deepchord, ‘20 Electrostatic Soundfields’, 2013, Soma



(Some of these are quite dark, and there are relatively few easy listens, but there's not actually a bad one amongst them).