![]() Jeck cites Oxmardyke’s history of the Knights Templar of the sixth century he imagines their ghosts still floating around the place. When thinking about this music, Watson cites JMW Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed as an inspiration the painting depicts the clash of nature and industry in sullen earth tones, not unlike the recordings he captured. ![]() Place feels both literal and metaphorical on Oxmardyke. Jeck’s penchant for vivid sound bolsters Watson’s keen eye for the most affecting sounds of nature, unearthing the emotions hidden inside of them. To make Oxmardyke, he took the sounds Watson captured – many different bird calls and metallic screeches of passing freight trains – and toyed with them, ultimately creating eerie music. The music he makes here reflects his classic textural sound and collaborations like 2021’s Stardust, in which he distorted recordings made by Faith Coloccia that revolved around motherhood. Oxmardyke came to fruition just before Jeck’s untimely passing in 2022, during moments in which his pain subsided enough that he could work on his laptop. After one post-show conversation about the sound and history of the area around the Oxmardyke crossing, it was clear that Watson’s Oxmardyke rail crossing recordings could be a good fit for uniting their visions, particularly blending Watson’s interest in recording the world with precision and Jeck’s curiosity about how the past may still haunt the present. In his liner notes accompanying the release, Watson remembers how he and Jeck got to know each other over drinks at the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, indulging in a good bit of merriment but also discussing making music together someday. ![]() Jeck and Watson, both mainstays of the Touch record label catalogue, were longtime friends. Photo of Philip Jeck live in Turin by Jon Wozencroft Jeck’s resulting mix, Oxmardyke, finds a careful balance between the two artists’ quintessential styles, mixing Watson’s crisp field recordings and Jeck’s broad-stroked swaths of sound. He later sent these recordings to his friend Philip Jeck, who took them and transformed them using his laptop, creating impressions of the place through tactile sound. These field recordings sound of industry and nature in harmony – as trains rush by and birds swarm around them, chirping through the metallic scratches and gusts of wind and dust. So, he returned to the place for a few weeks, gathering new tape with each excursion. When Chris Watson travelled by the Oxmardyke rail crossing in 2017, he found its sound to be enticing.
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