And now for something completely different, as they used to say on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, before shifting on to a sketch that was pretty much the same as the previous one. No chance of that happening here.
I was initially attracted to H C Fell, aka Hannes Ferm, both by the wonderful bombast of the title of this single, ‘Three for the Hollow, from the Wastes toward the Sky’ – it sounds like it could have been a 1970s prog rock song – and by the fact that he is signed to Anna von Hausswolff’s label Pomperipossa Records.
You have to have style and panache to merit that, for sure.
Moreover, his influences, which include opera, contemporary classical music and the Italian castrato singing tradition, which used to mean chopping your balls off before puberty so you could sing soprano or falsetto.
I don’t know how Hannes managed it and to be honest I don’t want to, but he makes a pretty good fist of it.
Listening to it is like suspending disbelief before you head into a Tolkien or Dan Brown novel and imagining you’re attending the BBC’s ‘Carols from Kings’ TV programme on Christmas Eve, only to discover that the eucharist is being read by the Reverend Beelzebub and the baby in the crib has a pair of horns.
If that sounds extreme it’s because this piece of music is just that as far as I’m concerned, with its screaming, tortured violins, what sounds like piano wires being strummed like Keith Emerson used to do, frenzied vocals and lack of any discernible time signature. It takes no prisoners.
Modern prog, perhaps? I don’t know what to call it, but I’ll apply my usual movie analogy to it. It would fit the soundtrack of that Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie film, the eerie ‘Don’t look now’; the part where the cradle carrying the art restorer Sutherland at the top of a church collapses, leaving him rolling around on a rope for what seems an eternity while the bells cascade around him.
It won’t be making the Billboard 100 but it will certainly grab your attention.
His debut album, the equally abstractly titled ‘Tremble, rejoice, my tongue’s harvest’, is out on November 13th. The album is dedicated to his father Jan, a composer whose music also features in the recording.
Find him on:
Bandcamp: https://hcfell.bandcamp.com/album/tremble-rejoice-my-tongues-harvest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannes_ferm/
Facebook (private account): https://www.facebook.com/hannes.ferm
