Local & Global Electronica:  mho at Nan Moor’s, and Thom Yorke/Mark Pritchard: Tall Tales

Thoughts from Alan Dearling               

Mark Pritchard/Thom Yorke: ‘Tall Tales’

Video ‘The Spirit’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5IATIMlrw

This is the first full album collaboration between producer Mark Pritchard and Radiohead’s singer and composer, Thom Yorke. It is a multi-layered, often disembodied beast, full of dark, deep voids. Apparently the two artists worked entirely on-line, sending and sharing music, lyrics and ideas without actually ever meeting up during the production. In fact, Mark has told the press that he started working on some of the tracks as early as 2015, so it’s not even a Covid lock-down album.

Thom has used various electronica to manipulate his voice and effects, and Mark went back into a musical time-machine to obtain and use many old synthesisers from the 1950s and 60s. ‘Tall Tales’ is certainly a Gothick dystopian musical adventure, apparently inspired at least to some extent by Orwell’s ‘1984’. It opens with something akin to the sound of a heart beating. It’s rather ominous, a little frightening, and oppressive. There is a sound a little like a harmonium drone and ethereal voices in ‘A fake in a faker’s world’. ‘Ice shelf’ sounds like its title, cold and disembodied. It continues as an arctic haunting with militaristic, Marshall-marching music. ‘Back in the game again’ exists in relatively more normal musical territory, but is still dystopian, with a snarling vocal, and lots of pulses and totemic beats, sounding as if from a far-off satellite.

The album feels musically thematic, “Everything is out of our hands”, Thom sings in the ‘White cliffs’, and there is a lot of plaintive vocalising in ‘The Spirit’. ‘Tall Tales’, the title track, is a danse macabre. Perhaps containing a montage of the lost voices of the undead? ‘Happy Days’ offers an up-tempo vibe, full of Brechtian spirit, bagpipe-like drones, and then a Laurie Anderson-style vocal delivery in ‘The men who dance in stags’ heads’. We leave the album led by a wandering musical genie. It’s strange, powerful, and profoundly weird.

Dave Walker/mho: At ‘Nan Moor’s’ featuring Thalassa and Abbie Hampshire

Dave Walker hosts many electronica events and experiments across venues round the local area and beyond where I live in West Yorkshire. His passion spills over into his own compositions and music. Just as I was planning to review the ‘Tall Tales’ album from Pritchard and Yorke, he handed me his latest CD.  Dave told me: “This CD is a compilation of the most chilled tracks from my two albums on Sinners Music – ‘Blueprint’ and ‘Static Display’ plus a couple of bonus tracks at the end. Played during the mho set at Open Decks in Nan Moor’s, hence the title.

Sinners Music is on bandcamp.”

So, here are some of my thoughts after spinning the disc on my BBC reference system in the studio.  Dave’s musical creations are extremely filmic. It criss-crosses the territory inhabited by Vangelis, Mike Oldfield and Jean-Michel Jarre. It’s ambitious, and the album collection kicks off with ‘Valete’, which is a jaunty little tune, with a nautical flourish, utilising delicate piano augmented with orchestral, symphonic aspirations. I was definitely minded of ‘Chariots of Fire’! ‘I am with you’ is baroque, and ‘Chorale’ provides a choir-full of angels interpolated into a simple piano riff. The vaguely Germanic sounding ‘Nie Rozumiem’ is actually derived from the phrase ‘I do not understand’ in Polish.

Dave obviously enjoys melody and rollicking rhythms as evinced on the track, ‘Voices’. It’s a bit like a roller-coaster ride in an expensive first class airport lounge, while on an amphetamine speed trip! ‘Eternal’ adds double-bass into the mix with piano. Epic and absolutely over the top. ‘Ave Maria’ on steroids. By the end of proceedings, ‘Close Enough’ breaks into an array of EDM beats. There’s an almighty lot going on during this electronic outpouring of ‘mho’, which I think Dave told me is ‘ohm’ in reverse, but meaning connectivity, rather than impedance.

‘Chorale’ from the Mayor’s Ball, Todmorden, 2024, video by Scott van der Zanden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgsV4f88NIw

mhotunes are available to listen to on bandcamp.