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| BUY THE ALBUM HERE |
The tape distorts and I am on the Black Special, sweeping across the grey landscape towards my
refuge. Calm voices of probable doom are buffeted by the rhythm of the turning steel
on the tracks. And although the end is near I am smiling at these sweet sounds
of grey horror. As visions of a melting landscape drift before me, the Radomes
stand proud, incongruous and mighty. It is time to disembark.
I can hear the pulsing beats of the microwave relay echoing down the hundred metre blast tunnel. In the generator room a man wearing spectacles sits behind his desk, pressing buttons. I start to tremble. My feet shift left to right and my head
sways back and forth. Are my teeth loose or is it my imagination?
They are coming. They are clothed head to toe in white,
breath echoing in their cylindrical masks, voices muffled.
“There has been an Unspecified
Radiological Incident,” one of them shouts, but her voice is far away and
distant. It seems like a memory of something I never knew. She takes off her
helmet, asking me if I have come to join the ROC Trainee programme. The man behind the desk stands and flicks a
switch. The beats go dark. A voice of an old recording sweeps across, the
analogue invades the digital, a misremembered score for a public information
film.
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| I bought this badge in an Antiques Shop in Sheringham, Norfolk. Everything else in the shop was made of brass. |
The woman leads me up a flight of stairs. We wind our way higher and higher breaking through the concrete, the granite and the sod into grey steel and air. Higher and higher. The view from Pye Green Tower is one of imagined devastation. I wish for an end, for emptiness, for the new start that I have seen rehearsed over and over. But I am left waiting, watching.
In the radar room the dot dances, blips and repeats, the man
behind the desk stares at it. Scratching his bobbing head. Men and women are working
at beige computers, clacking away at heavy keyboards. Waltzing from chair, to
screen, to map, to dancing dot. The end of the world was never so romantic. If
the tunnel protects us from the inevitable this will be the seat of power. We
will need a system. We will need new
governments for a new nation. Someone will need to guide us. I hear a voice
of calm among the beats and pulses and steel hits, but it is not enough. The
man behind the desk is still. Just for a moment.
In the quiet the click of the hardened telephone exchange sings out. Soft sweeping synth caresses
the wires, buzzing pylon waves of electricity swim in steady strokes above our
heads. The man behind the desk is poised. Alert. He takes off his glasses and
gives them a wipe.
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| "The radiation from this dust is dangerous. It cannot be seen or felt." Protect and Survive - Crown 1980 |
A mask and suit are thrust into my hands.
“Just in case,” someone mutters. “We must be ready for the dustfall. Have you built your inner
refuge? Your fallout room? Maybe you should stay here. Maybe you should stay
with us. Listen.”
The calm voice reassures and frightens in equal measure.
Soft tones, rich electronic bass and mechanical clanks, but underneath are reassuring tones that carry sweet nightmare on their breath.
I will stay. The man behind the desk demands it. He draws me
in. Commanding me to listen again. To Protect and Survive. To plan my survival
kit. To know the warning sounds. To remember. To do this for memory. For past.
For future. For concrete and country.
The man behind the desk bows. I will listen again.
The apocalypse is coming and it is a beautiful thing.
You can listen to the
first track here: https://concretism-cis.bandcamp.com/track/black-special
Concretism
For Concrete and
Country.
An Album of Grim
British Cold War Electronica.
Vinyl LP and Digital
Download.
Released by Castles in
Space on 20th April, 2018.
Genre: Electronica,
Hauntology.
Format: 12” vinyl LP
(300 copies black vinyl. 200 copies Turquoise Vinyl.)
Also available as a
digital download.
Release date: 20th
April 2018
Available from: Norman
Records, Castles in Space Bandcamp.
Following on from a
series of EP downloads and 2016’s vinyl compilation album, ‘Electricity’,
Concretism releases an all new album, “For Concrete and Country” via Castles in
Space on 20th April 2018. Drawing on influences from the books ‘War Plan UK’
and ‘Beneath the City Streets’, this album features music inspired by Britain’s
Cold War infrastructure and state continuity preparations for nuclear
emergencies - both real and imagined. The album takes us on a sonically
adventurous journey through microwave tower networks, hardened telephone
exchanges and devolved regional governments.
The wonderful artwork
is by Richard Littler (“Scarfolk”) and features an adapted image of a “radome”
located at Field Station 8613, a secret base located about nine miles west of
Harrogate in North Yorkshire. These massive white golf ball-like domes protrude
from the earth, protected behind a perimeter fence topped with piercing razor
wire. Here, in the heart of the tranquil English countryside, these sinister
radomes were used to monitor Soviet communications throughout the height of the
Cold War.
Chris Sharp, the
talent behind the Concretism project, takes inspiration from this not too
distant world of nuclear and cold war paranoia, resulting in an album of
unsettling electronics which perfectly invokes the pervasive cultural disquiet
of intrusive surveillance, the red menace and the bomb. Fears which the recent
drift of events confirm are still very much with us, remaining part of our
societal DNA.
