Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan :: Districts, Roads, Open Space (Castles In Space)

Overall, D, R, O S makes for a diverting work of wry mischief-making social comment in sonic documentary clothing couched in ’70s/80s library sonics and retro-fit synthesis. RIYL other CIS types like Dalham, Clocolan, Field Lines Cartographer.

A particular strain of lugubrious hauntologically-inflected retro-futurism

Gordon Chapman-Fox’s artist nomenclature bespeaks a certain droll Northern wit, while serving to indicate Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan‘s ambit of interest. Operating in a nostalgia-imbued warbly (ersatz?) analog ’70s-channeling area familiar from such as Pye Corner Audio, Belbury Poly and Ghost Box-related, the musical vision realized on Districts, Roads, Open Space delves deeper into the past-inside-the-present explored over the first two albums, Interim Report, March 1979 and People & Industry.

There is no romance in places like Warrington and Runcorn; nor any low-grade reverse-exotic brutalism for that matter. The casual observer may note a kind of concrete-breezeblock analog of magnolia painted walls and beige carpets that dulls the senses (insider knowledge: this reviewer lived nearby early in these new towns’ development). Chapman-Fox may seem a bit of an oddity, then, to find fascination (and keep feeling it!) in such places. Understandable, though, perhaps, if one considers it is the impact—existential and psychological—on those who lived and worked there, and the creative-imaginative food derived, that is the driver. On D, R, O S it finds expression in a particular strain of lugubrious hauntologically-inflected retro-futurism heard first on W-RNTDP’s debut and sophomore albums, opening with two extended pieces before exploring Euclidean sequencing in a series of shorter sketches, its evocative synth vignettes sporting a suitably developed sound palette.

Dwelling on a recent return to Warrington-Runcorn, Chapman-Fox sees in his work an emergent reflection of the social isolation of life new town-style—further cemented by a stifling near two-year lockdown context. Beneath its evocation of some aspects of post-industrial Britain and its insipid psychogeography is a critique of the planning aesthetic of the new town project, an artificial design for life that ‘failed to understand the sheer messiness of human existence.’ Overall, D, R, O S makes for a diverting work of wry mischief-making social comment in sonic documentary clothing couched in ’70s/80s library sonics and retro-fit synthesis. RIYL other CIS types like Dalham, Clocolan, Field Lines Cartographer.

For adepts, release day brought with it a (transparent blue) vinyl reissue of the sold-out People & Industry, all three W-RNTDP albums made newly available on 6-panel digipak CD, and news of a headline spot at November’s Castles in Space Levitation ’22 festival.

Districts, Roads, Open Space is available on Castles In Space [Bandcamp]