Straight society often views conceptual or avant-garde art with a suspicion bordering on hatred. “Art for art’s sake,” a dirty phrase, meant to imply these artists contribute nothing to society, only existing to inflate their own egos and justifying their existence with pretentious-sounding theories that the everyman can not understand. Look at the way various totalitarian regimes have treated music, which seems to suggest that the only official purpose of artists is to create heroic anthems and propaganda for the glory of the state, as an example.
Yet for many, experimental art and music is often a gateway to revolutionary thought and activism. It pries the scabs from our eyes, peels the topsoil of society away like a Glycolic skin peel, revealing bones and artifacts of the past – skeletons that were meant to stay buried.
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On the Lowermoor EP, the follow up to his well received Carn album, released on vinyl on More Than Human records, Kemper Norton weaves a deft tapestry of spoken samples, found sounds, synthesizers and skewed electronics to investigate the Camelford Water Poisoning incident of 1988 in Cornwall, where 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate leaked into the town’s drinking water supply, and broke down into sulphuric acid. The South West Water Authority neglected to inform the public for 16 days, gambling with as many as 20,000 lives.
On Lowermoor, Kemper Norton seems to be speaking from a vantage of the genius loci, or the land itself, speaking as a cliff face or a meadow, that has watched many, many generations of humans come and go. There is a feeling of wisdom and acceptance, and an ancient, yearning sadness. The EP illustrates one of the most interesting aspects of music, which is not often discussed: the ability to blend, mesh and layer different periods of time, which makes it unusually effective in creating this sense of Platonic dreamtime. Even movies, one of the more immersive artforms out there, are linear and thus contained by waking logic. Hearing a patchwork assemblage of samples and field recordings produces an uncanny sensation: it makes our nervous systems stand up on end. It is an act of artifice, an illusion, and it plunges our psyches into the ritualistic world of altered consciousness.Of course, an interesting origin story to contextualize a work is all well and good, but it doesn’t make a piece of music work. The sine waves are left to their own devices, to stand or fall on their own accord, and subject to ancient laws such as narrative, execution and emotionality.
Kemper Norton succeeds on all of these fronts.
First of all, the production is rich and detailed (I need to get a copy of this on vinyl), as echoes dash across the space like a phantom carriage, and skybent synthesizers glow like a nimbus. There’s a rich and dreamy reverb that hangs over the whole proceedings, giving Lowermoor the sensation of a half-remembered dream, but it is tailored and tucked in, made to serve the cause. The EP is also short and sweet, never outstaying its welcome; which means this a record you can return to again and again, effectively transforming yr home/office commute into Cornwall for 24 minutes. You can feel her anguish, and her brooding.Lowermoor incorporates elements of glitch, drone, field recordings, folk music and composition, and adds something to each of those genres in turn. At least 60% of that laundry list runs a danger of extinction or irrelevancy, succumbing to nostalgia and cliché, never really saying anything new. Which is too bad, as each of those art forms had revolutionary implications, upon emerging. Kemper Norton is injecting an insurgent spirit back into composition; rediscovering the communal power of the folk revival as he harnesses the empathetic power of listening to field recordings from faraway.
Ultimately, the vision I was left with was the form of King Arthur, slumbering beneath the rolling hills of Cumberland, being baptized in toxic sludge and sulphuric acid, boiling down to rot and bones, as stars wheel by in sickly phosphorescent fury. He does not mind, he will endure, but in a more putrescent state. The sun is setting on the Empire, the ravens are flying away. The people’s eyes grow hard and mistrustful. They’ve been lied to for so long, by the people who were supposed to protect them. Now there’s no one; just a cold, hard world.-J Simpson-
