They’ve Built an Ark in Arkham

They’ve Built an Ark in Arkham, Jumble Hole Clough,
(Bandcamp Digital Album – name your price)

History is strange. Future archaeologists – if there are any – piecing together the wreckage of this civilisation might not even know that a picturesque valley just outside Hebden Bridge was once known as Jumble Hole Clough, let alone the fact that it gave its name to a unique, surreal musical project. It would be nice to think, though, that walking through the trees there, they might sense an uncanny presence, or hear whispered voices in the water falling over the rocks: some are under tables, / some are behind chairs, / one is hiding in the cupboard / underneath the stairs.

Jumble Hole Clough is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Colin Robinson. Although he sometimes brings in collaborators, he basically plays all the instruments himself. The latest JHC album, They’ve Built an Ark in Arkham, was released last month – coincidentally, though appropriately – on International Strange Music Day (August 24^th, if you didn’t know already). I tracked Colin down to the cupboard underneath his stairs where he talked to me about it, Jumble Hole Clough generally and his musical development.

DR: How did you get into making music? Did you learn an instrument when you were a kid?

CR: I didn’t learn to play as a kid; my mum sang in choirs, so there was a piano in the house, which I used to mess about with. We did music at school, so I learnt to play Three Blind Mice on the recorder. Most of the rest of the lessons involved memorising Mozart’s birth and death dates and so on. Eventually, my mum bought me an acoustic guitar from Oxfam. I couldn’t get to grips with that at all – turns out that the neck was twisted so it was untunable. But I recorded it with my cassette recorder, making odd sounds.

I went to college in Leeds when I was 16, and several lads on my course played in bands. I decided I wanted to do that too, so I bought an electric guitar and an amp. Having spent a grand total of £40 on the equipment, I decided I needed to learn to play. I bought two American books: “How to play Rock’n’Roll lead guitar!” and “How to play Rock’n’Roll rhythm guitar!” and I was all set. I then started jamming with friends in Leeds – we thought we could be the next King Crimson…

DR: You were part of the experimental rock band, Big Block 454 for over twenty years, I think. Could you tell us a bit about it – and the journey you made from starting out as a musician to playing with them?

CR: I went to Salford University when I was 18. They said you could have free music lessons on orchestral instruments. I wanted to learn the saxophone; I bought a tenor sax and went along. The University said the sax was a dirty instrument and not orchestral, so I had some clarinet lessons instead. Those were the only music lessons I ever had. I haven’t touched the clarinet since.

After leaving University and getting a job, I bought a synthesiser and was invited to join the band Night Visitors (on synth and sax). We played a lot of gigs in the North-West… we were a bit like Blondie. Eventually, we did some recording at Graveyard Studios in Prestwich (where Joy Division and A Certain Ratio had recorded). We did some work with Steve Garvey (Buzzcocks) and Martin Hannett. And then we bought Graveyard Studios and lived there for several years – so I learnt a lot more about synthesisers and recording.

After Night Visitors folded, I formed a band with Melissa Sinden (vocals) and the drummer from Night Visitors. We played live round Manchester for a while. After that ran its course, Melissa and I started recording.

We were joined by guitarist Pete Scullion, who I’d met at work. He had an Atari ST and Creator midi software, so we moved into the realm of computer music (pre-PC…) and became Big Block 454 (I was into American cars at the time and had a Ford Thunderbird with a Small Block 302 V8).

Pete and I then played some gigs – computer and guitar – including various events at the Viewpoint Gallery in Salford, hosted by Tony Wilson. We released a 12” single with Melissa on vocals.

Then I met keyboard player Mark Joell at work and he joined Big Block 454. Having heard our music, Alex Stone (guitar and vocals) met us and joined too. We made a series of albums, which are on Bandcamp (see links, below). The core line-up was Pete Scullion, Mark Joell, Alex Stone and me. Pete left after a while. Our last album, Bells & Proclamations, was released in 2011 – Big Block 454 is currently dormant but not dead. Every so often, Mark, Pete and I get together and do some recording. Eventually, we’ll release an album (hopefully with Alex and Melissa on it as well).

DR: How did Jumble Hole Clough come about?

CR: I moved to Calderdale in 2011 and started meeting local musicians (there are a lot of musicians and artists in Calderdale, which is one of the reasons I came here). I got involved in sessions at the old Nutclough Tavern in Hebden Bridge, putting on gigs where we’d have three differing bands or solo artists playing rather obscure, left-field music. This went really well, and I performed at a lot of those sessions. I played solo looping electric guitar and started using the name Jumble Hole Clough (after a local valley).

The late Mick West, a local avant-garde guitarist who was running the Nutclough events, taped everything that was played – so I started releasing my live sessions on Bandcamp using his tapes. I then started recording more Jumble Hole Clough material, with more band-like structures, in my own studio. I think there’s about 45 Jumble Hole Clough albums on Bandcamp currently.

I also had a band (mostly a recording unit, though we did do a few live performances) with American musician Richard Knutson (who had relocated from the wilds of Minnesota to Bolton, Lancashire). The band was named Churn Milk Joan (after a local standing stone) and we released 10 albums on Bandcamp (see links, below) before Richard sadly contracted Motor Neurone Disease and died in 2020.

Recently, I have been concentrating on recording Jumble Hole Clough material and the occasional Big Block 454 piece, while playing live with local improvising band Abrasive Pheasants (Mick West had been the Pheasants’ guitarist until he died in 2018, and I took over from him). I have also been playing in various improvising sessions round the area.

DR: The tracks on They’ve built an Ark in Arkham were created over several years. You describe them as ‘a collection of somewhat odd songs’ – so, a typical Jumble Hole Clough album, then! You were working on several other albums over that period. Presumably, given that they’re album-quality tracks, these just didn’t fit in to your other projects? Could you tell us a bit about them?

CR: I played in the Manchester band Night Visitors between about 1979 and 1983. The Night Visitors singer Janice then moved to France and later on moved to the USA, where she still is today.

A while ago, Janice did the vocals for a Jumble Hole Clough track on the album ‘Bats Tidied Up Heliport’. I recorded the music, mailed it to her, she wrote the lyrics and recorded the vocals in her studio in the USA, mailed it back, I mixed it…

She was over in Manchester in 2022 and we decided to make an album together, using the same mailing technique. I put together an album of music, using some existing pieces I was working on plus some new pieces. I then mailed these to Janice.

Unfortunately, Janice has had some long-term health issues and told me this year that realistically, she was unlikely to be able to complete the project and I should finish it off myself. So I sat on the pieces for the early part of 2024, then I decided what to do with them and constructed the lyrics, recorded the vocals and added a few extra instrumental parts in a couple of weeks in August 2024.

DR: Listening to Jumble Hole Clough it’s impossible not to sense extra-musical influences – Dada , Surrealism, etc. Even before you start listening, it’s pretty obvious from the titles and the album art. Could you say a bit about that?

CR: I have been interested in Dada and Surrealistic art, writings, films and music for a long time.
I bought a couple of books as a teenager – Dada, art and anti-art and Stockhausen, conversations with the composer – which really influenced me. And seeing the David Lynch film Eraserhead was an eye-opener, as were other films such as The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari.

Early on in the Big Block 454 era, me and Pete Scullion worked with abstract artist Russell Mills (who has worked with Brian Eno and U2, amongst many others). We created loops of music for his Measured in Shadows installation – we mixed it at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios and then the installation was shown in Carlisle and in the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. We picked up a lot of interesting information from Russell.

I’m interested in word-play such as anagrams. Quite a lot of the Jumble Hole Clough titles may contain anagrams… My dad used to win lots of crossword competitions; perhaps I picked it up from him.

I also like to use chance in my compositions. I used to use a variety of aleatoric techniques to construct songs; dice and so on. I use the Brian Eno ‘Oblique Strategies’ card pack of aphorisms when I’m recording; and we also use them live with Abrasive Pheasants to structure our improvisations. I am now trying out generative procedures with my synthesisers, making pieces that gradually evolve in a random yet structured way. I’m not interested in just chaos – I want to create something that evolves. And something that is listenable to as a piece of music rather than as a technical exercise.

So, I use surrealism and random elements during the initial construction of the music and also in the lyrics. But I want to create a piece of entertaining and listenable-to music, rather than something totally obscure. The songs all mean something; they’re not just random collections of words! The process is important, but the finished product is more important – I got that from Russell Mills. I like Zappa’s concept of conceptual continuity – fragments of songs appear in much later songs, in different ways. It ties the whole project together.

One thing about 20th-century experimental composers such as Stockhausen, Cage and Varese – I can read books about them and think what fascinating ideas they had, very inspiring.
But then I listen to the music and don’t find it as inspiring as the ideas…

A quote from the late Richard Knutson: ‘Titles are of the utmost importance. They’re a window into the soul of the composer.’ I hate going round an art gallery and seeing paintings called ‘Untitled’. I put a lot of thought into the titles of my songs and albums, and make sure I choose a cover photo which matches the title and the feeling of the album.

People have said that some of my pieces are humorous. That’s not the intention, although most of my songs will make me laugh at some point during their construction. The lyrics and titles are not gibberish, although some may well be nonsense. There’s a big difference.

I am influenced by whimsical ‘nonsense’ writers such as Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc, AA Milne, Edward Lear and so on. And when you investigate their nonsense, you find yourself going down a rabbit hole (see what I did there…) into some very interesting areas. Think about Alice Through The Looking Glass – based on a chess game, which is why the Red Knight and White Knight move in odd ways.

I keep a notepad by my bed, and write down any interesting dreams. These form a basis to quite a few of my lyrics. There is often a puzzling quality about these, which I like a lot.

I hope that some of the references in the songs will make people investigate further.
Without giving too much away… Take ‘Harold Be Thy Name’ on the latest album. Harold Wilson suffered from dementia in his later years. The spoken word section is a quote. But what did he mean?

DR: How did the vocoder (as in ‘Harold Be Thy Name’) come about?

CR: My friend Mark Joell (keyboard player in Big Block 454) brings equipment round to show me. He brought his hardware vocoder round and set it up, so I used it in a recording because… why not?
It fitted what I was working on.

DR: You’re very much a ‘one man band’ in Jumble Hole Clough. You do pull in collaborators, but, generally, you tend to play all the instruments yourself. You talked about how you compose. Could you tell us a bit about the practical process of putting a typical (if there is such a thing) track together? Do things happen and go off in other directions once you start recording?

CR: Using the studio as a compositional tool. That’s what I do.

There isn’t a typical track, but usually I’ve been playing about with something (an interesting scale or chord sequence on the guitar, a strange sound, a sequence on a synthesiser or a rhythm machine) and decide to record it.

I then collate these ideas and fragments of songs and keep going back to listen to them. Eventually, I’ll select a few to do some further work on, or maybe combine some of them.

When I start working on the pieces in the studio, ideas just suddenly pop up – and I follow them. The structure of the piece will then start to evolve. I like to make pieces that are quite unusual but also are entertaining and easy to listen to (in my opinion…)

I am unlikely to know what the final outcome will be when I start the work. But I know when it’s finished.

I write down snippets of lyrics in a folder as they come to me, and then collate them later. When I’m writing things down, I let them flow out of my head without editing – just let it all come out, get it down, and then manipulate it later. It’s very easy to edit things on the fly – “that’s a daft word or meaningless sentence, let’s alter it so that it makes more sense” – but then you could lose what interested you in the first place.

The vocals tend to come after the main body of music has been recorded, but there will then be editing – altering the music to fit the flow of the lyrics, removing sections that don’t work with the lyrics and so on.

Editing is really important. Drastic editing can change the whole piece – and it might involve deleting sections that I have spent a lot of time on. But the finished product is the important thing.

I rarely sit down with a guitar, play some chords, add some vocals and have a finished song that just needs recording. Sometimes perhaps, but not often. That’s not what I do. The studio is an instrument as much as the guitars and synthesisers – the pieces are ‘composed’ using the studio.

DR: As Jumble Hole Clough, you’ve produced a helluva lot of music. I’ve counted up and you were right –  They’ve built an Ark in Arkham is album number 45. Do you have favourites? Which would you most like people to keep listening to?

CR: That’s very tricky. I usually like the most recent thing the best! When I’m working on an album, I’m listening to it over and over again. Once it’s finished, I don’t tend to listen to it much more. I don’t sit and listen to my older albums on a regular basis. It always surprises me when I do listen to the older albums; I wonder how I achieved certain sounds and effects!

Having said that, I particularly like the ‘song’ albums. Favourites (off the top of my head): Don’t Say Nowt, The Eric Satie Toga Party, I can name the un-named boy, Bats Tidied Up Heliport, Bela Lugosi’s Dad and 202 Days.

DR: What you do seems inseparable from where you do it, even when it takes us out on day-trips (as on this album) to Linton-on-Ouse, Burton-on-Trent and suchlike. There’s a note of dry, Yorkshire wit to the lyrics and the music often seems to breathe the same air as Hebden Bridge. Can you say a bit about that?

CR: I like to use place names in songs; it lends… well, a sense of place. A context. People appear in the songs too; again, it gives a context.

I find Hebden Bridge and the whole of Calderdale very inspiring. I also find industrial archaeology inspiring too; the remains of mills and engineering works dotted about throughout what has now reverted to countryside. Places that are now fields and woods but were a hive of industry 200 years ago. There’s a lot of old buildings; I used to live in a cottage in Mytholmroyd that was about 400 years old – you feel the weight of all the people who have lived there, all the things that have happened over the years. The cottage would have been there when the Royalist Army marched on Heptonstall in the 1640s.

There’s a lot of very interesting people living in Calderdale; there’s always things happening, things to do, things to see. Lots of interesting venues, too. Great for field recordings, too – I have made recordings in the woods behind my house – woodpeckers, barking deer, the usual!

When I’m working on an album, I will go for walks round about and also drive aimlessly through the countryside, picking up the atmosphere. I’ve been here for years, but there’s always new places to discover. I like looking at old OS maps and finding that what is now a field was once the site of a brickworks and a rope-hauled tramway.

Things that are now hidden but once were teeming with life.

DR: Well, thank you for telling us so much about what you do and how you do it! Any final thoughts?

CR: My albums (Jumble Hole Clough, Big Block 454 and Churn Milk Joan) are all available through Bandcamp, and they’re all ‘name your price’ downloads – so you can download them for free. I’m more interested in getting my music out to people than in making money. (Though I’m not averse to making money…)

One thing I would say about independently-created music – publicity is vitally important.
If you hear some music that you really like, tell your friends. Link to it on social media.
That would be very helpful.

 

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Dominic Rivron/Colin Robinson

LINKS
They’ve Built an Ark in Arkham:
https://jumbleholeclough.bandcamp.com/album/theyve-built-an-ark-in-arkham

Big Block 454:
https://bigblock454.bandcamp.com/

Churn Milk Joan:
https://churnmilkjoan.bandcamp.com/