Strange Selectors

You know how some music makes you feel strongly nostalgic for something that never actually was? Not in your life, not in anybody’s, but still strangely real. Somehow certain music seems to be a soundscape to a whole set of encounters and experiences that have never yet happened but which seem to haunt your imagination. It’s as if there’s a set of episodes, as in a novel a story or a film, that you once participated in, and you seem to ‘remember’ the scenes quite deeply, and in fact you might even still be playing them out somewhere else than here, on some other plane.

I’m not talking here about the music that actually is nostalgic to you, the soundtrack to your life, the sunshine and rain songs of your youth, your love, your friendships, your holidays, your visions, maybe your angers and your joys and your sorrows. No: this is the music that comes from nowhere, that is new to you, and yet suddenly you are dreaming those scenes that never were.

It doesn’t have to be music played on the most obviously evocative instruments such as the cello, piano, cor anglais, acoustic guitar. And I guess we all get triggered differently. The most recent perpetrators of it for me emanate from a new Edinburgh label called Werra Foxma who offer what might be approximately described as ambient electronica with a hauntological quality, as heard, for example, in their recent release of The Loop Union's Serendipity album.

Their sound is a bit more nova- futuristic than the retro-futuristic sound of, say, Ghost Box: situated perhaps somewhat later than the vintage 60s/70s SF mood of the latter label. More Blade-Runner than Quatermass.

The earlier Werra Foxma releases were mostly for download but with a few highly limited CDs. But if you want to get a sense of their style, they’ve just released Strange Selectors, a compilation album of tracks by 16 various artists, all of them absolutely worth getting to know.

I once had a K-Tel album in the 70s called (22) Electrifying Hits, not all of which (such was the way of such budget jamborees) were in fact hits nor indeed all that electrifying. But Electrifying Hits would be a good tongue-in-cheek sub-title for Strange Selectors. It comes with collectors’ cards and stickers too:  and the proceeds go to Médecins Sans Frontières. It’s in a limited edition of 100. Seems to me like it could be the perfect soundtrack for your journey out to metaphysical adventures.

 (Mark Valentine)