The Fields of Hay - A Circle of Skin

The Fields of Hay is SJ Carter, a founding member of the experimental project Theme and an occassional member of the experimental guitar noise band Splintered. The Fields of Hay have operated erratically over the years. In 2007 they released Songs for Nine Ladies, an album mixing pastoral guitar with cosmic ambience which featured Sonic Boom on a couple of tracks.

A Circle of Skin is their latest and within its three lengthy tracks it continues to mix acoustic and electronic instrumentation alongside field recordings. While it shares an approach to their earlier album its markedly different from those and also the dense experimentalism of Splintered's recent album Between Scylla and Charybdis. However, it retains that sense of hypnotism. Shifting from acoustic guitar laced with noise ripples and harsh textures, the opener, 'This Is Just the Beginning', slips into hypnotic patterns of acoustic strumming, set against feedback splinters and waves of careening noise. Additional layers of guitar build its intensity, while wailing soprano atmospherics deepen its sense of mystery. A second section transitions into quickened strum, woven with flourishes of wavering and bleeping electronics that continually shape-shift, becoming harsher and more chaotic. The wailing soprano grows increasingly haunted as the piece dissolves into noisy disarray. Meditative, moody, and at times Swans-like in its single-mindedness, the track binds stark contrasts into a cohesive whole.

The barking dog at the start of 'Unheilige Magie' serves as a warning, leading into an unsettling, experimental soundscape more in the vein of Nurse With Wound. A low, rumbling drone underpins the piece, its hum punctuated by rustling, rattling, and quaking sounds. It unfolds like a nightmarish fever dream, featuring swirling and cascading electronics, pulsing bleeps, ticking clocks, and shifting effects. As the drone trembles and transforms, it eventually finds respite in the chirp of morning birdsong.

Bird calls continue into and throughout the slowed-down, processed electronics of 'Vamachara', where, with an alarming bird squeal, the piece bursts into the patter of hand drums and the clink of chimes before being sucked into looped, backward-spinning electronics. Queasy and disorienting, it shudders onward as the rhythms grow increasingly electronic, set against churning, cyclical patterns and crackling, fiery textures fizzing out in bird calls.

A Circle of Skin is an album of contrasts, its combination of acoustic and electronic instrumentation are both soothing and unsettling on an album described as "music to give solace during the dark autumn evenings. Creating images and patterns of comfort to deflect from the hallucinogenic disorientations of reality. As ever with these things, there are always demons and spirits lurking within the shadows of the album." It is an album that demands repeated plays to fully appreciate the hypnotic and meditative qualities which are given a sinister and surreal edge. I'd recommend listening to this while viewing the promo film produced to accompany A Circle of Skin. A Circle of Skin is released by Idioblast Records as a limited lathe cut LP in an edition of 25 as well as being available digitally from The Fields of Hay Bandcamp

Promo film to accompany the album A Circle of Skin by The Fields of Hay