Taking on board the artist’s recommendation to “tread carefully”, Rebecca Denniff (Subphotic, Storm Chorus) and David Owen (Band of Cloud, The FLK, Storm Chorus, The Hollow Men) offers up a triptych of sonic rituals that explores the uncanny slopes of Bonfire Hill.
Presented as an aural almanac, ‘Rituals’ is the first of four ambient electronic releases that will be revealed in 2024 by Bonfire Hill about life on said enigmatic hill. Each one of these releases will include three tracks and be later collected as a double album of songs about summoning, ritual and consequences.
Forming the opening act, Rituals begins with ‘Processional’ and we are immediately magicked to a faraway rural space absorbed by local legends and sacred ley lines. Where is Bonfire Hill? Could it be a place that exists, or perhaps once did – somewhere in the North of England, in Yorkshire, perhaps? Wherever it may or may not be, as I listen to Rituals, I feel this place calling me closer. What is Bonfire Hill? Clues lie in the music and the entrancing spoken word poetry by Denniff; twinned keys which may unlock some of the mysteries of this hollow hill.
Released to align with this year’s spring equinox, Rituals is our musical guide to the rhythms of the season of renewal and rebirth on Bonfire Hill. Combining electronic compositions and spoken word, ambient textures gently unravel and reveal themselves, rising and falling, thrumming and oscillating, perhaps echoing the undulations of the valleys, moors and nearby rivers. After the opening procession, a ‘Summoning’ follows, before Rituals ends with an ‘Awakening’, with each track feeling like the next chapter in a wider narrative.
“If you want to see a fairy, you should meet me on Bonfire Hill,” a narrator is our guide through haunted fields of snowdrops, primroses and crocus surrounded by “creatures of the darkest earth”. The stories shared are nature songs, hushed landscape anthems connected to a symphony of warm and quietly sparkling soundscapes. In terms of its connection and treatise of nature, Rituals can recall Kate Bush’s ‘50 Words for Snow’. A certain Bush-ian magic can be felt in Bonfire Hill’s gently ebbing and flowing illumination of ghosts of rural place. The mood at times is eerie, but always intriguing. We are hooked and primed to listen to the land, in order to find out more about the stories being told.
Rituals glistens with quiet magic. It is a weaving of folklore tales, a study in psychogeography and a song cycle of place. Admirers of the work of Amy Cutler will find plenty to unpack. As will anyone intrigued by PJ Harvey’s coming-of-age narrative poem ‘Orlam’ or 2023’s ‘I Inside the Old Year Dying’, which shares some of Bonfire Hill’s elusive and intimate meshing of the pastoral and poetic with ancient unknowns, rural whispers and excavation of local traditions.
After listening to Rituals several times, when I imagine looking across Bonfire Hill, I see a misty horizon line and gleam a site of fields dotted with jagged rocks and relics from an era of mining. I picture a shy stretch of moorland which hides secrets from the neolithic and bronze age. A site which asks questions of the past to its dotted stone cairns and where answers may be found hidden within the soil alongside ancient, long forgotten treasures.
Rituals is the first leg in this year’s journey of discovery of Bonfire Hill, so we can encourage ourselves to take our time and afford to retrace our steps, to circle back and listen closely to the vibrations of the land. This release rewards multiple listens – to the words, to the music, while walking outside, while resting, while dreaming. Take a few quiet moments to imagine what it could be like to visit Bonfire Hill. What can you see? What do you hear? Dig in and get transported.
Rituals by Bonfire Hill is available to support on Bandcamp: https://bonfirehill.bandcamp.com/album/rituals
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Ryan Hooper
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