Don't Say Nowt

Jumble Hole Clough's creator, Colin Robinson, describes it as 'music influenced by the landscape, industrial remains and experiences around Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. Forgotten things half-hidden beneath the undergrowth.' Robinson has now created forty-three albums under the Jumble Hole Clough name, the latest three being a trilogy based on written-down dreams ('the minor transient documents of everyday life', as he describes them). Over the previous forty, Robinson had moved gradually away from his self-imposed local brief. This trilogy, however, brings the world around Hebden Bridge back into focus: the calls of the curlews the crows and the sound of the church bells rising up from the valley (everyday experiences for anyone living around Hebden Bridge) mingle with more exotic, surreal dream-images. For example, someone – in one of the catchiest songs in the trilogy – has mysteriously filled the back of his car with riot-shields. I can't explain why I like that song as much as I do any more than I suspect Colin Robinson can explain why he dreamt it.

The first album of the trilogy, with its ambiguous double-negative title, Don't Say Nowt (and other dreams), contains conventional songs. Correction: conventional JHC songs, which is not quite the same thing. Conventional in JHC terms means short, sonically diverse and full of tongue-in-cheek surrealism. These are the dreams you were dreaming the moment you woke up: brief, vivid narratives with a logic of their own, which seemed perfectly reasonable while you were dreaming them.

The second album, You're Our Prisoner Now (and other dreams) is less conventional. All the tracks were 'based initially on aleatoric methods: generative, serial, Euclidean, tape loops and other such systems'. JHC produced its first album using generative music (...and I think the little house knew something about it; don't you?) almost exactly a year ago. One of the interesting things about that album – and this – is that even when relinquishing control of the music to algorithms, it still manages to sound like JHC.

The third album, The Sunken Chapel (and other dreams) goes even further in this direction. Listening to it for the first time, I immediately found myself thinking of it as a series of sound-tracks to dreams, like an album of the music for a film which only one person – in this case the dreamer, Colin Robinson – has ever seen.

If you've never heard the music of JHC before but enjoy listening to these albums as much as I do, you have a treat in store: you've still got the forty other albums in the JHC back catalogue to listen to.

.​..and I think the little house knew something about it; don't you?

I always keep a look out for any new releases by Jumble Hole Clough. If you don't know it, it's the brainchild of Colin Robinson of Big Block 454, which describes itself as 'making exploratory, highly individual music that encompasses rock, funk, electronica, folk music, Dadaist collage and much more besides.' Jumble Hole Clough seems to have grown out of this. It started out, as Robinson puts it, 'to produce music influenced by the landscape, industrial remains and experiences around Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire'. I would respectfully suggest that although JHC retains some of the eldritch oddity that I associate with that neck of the woods (it was once my stamping ground, too), it has, over the 39 albums now produced under the name, gone beyond it.

Of the 38 albums produced prior to this one it's hard to single out a favourite but mine is probably Answers on a Postcard. They're all more than worth a listen.

.​..and I think the little house knew something about it; don't you? is something of a departure – but less of one than might appear at first glance. It's a collection of generative music, an approach which has certainly not openly figured in JHC's music so far. As Robinson explains, 'you set up a system and some rules... A variety of probability and aleatoric functions are used, such as Turing Machines and nested Bernoulli gates. The probability process means that the music gradually changes over time.' Reading this, it was hard not to think of the work of Brian Eno. However, I was reminded of something someone once said of John Cage, that however much he used processes and aleatoric techniques to put distance between himself and his music, it still, somehow, managed to sound like John Cage. For all the processes, this album still manages to sound like Jumble Hole Clough - but in new and unexpected ways. The quirky, eldritch quality still shines through.

Jumble Hole Clough -as Cage once said of Satie- is indispensable.