The Bogquake Tapes: Bogquake.

Image courtesy of HUM.

According to their bandcamp page Harmonic Union Music was set up to 'hunt down and expose the lost sounds of Hookland’s musical pioneers'. I didn't know where Hookland is so checked it out on the internet, I came across a site 'Hookland; High Weirdness from the Lost County of England'  https://hookland.wordpress.com/about/ (1) that commented that Hookland is a psychogeographic space 'that doesn’t exist built around the real myth circuits, Albionic shadows and actual places of a 1970s childhood. Stories told in the form of the sort of travel that used to be given away at petrol stations, a cultural artefact from when the TV news carried UFO sightings and ghosts on their nightly bulletins along with reports of IRA bombs'. I don't know if that is the Hookland referred to by HUM, a space constructed out of the residue of the 70s, or whether their Hookland is a real place but The Bogquake Tapes certainly fits into the former! According to HUM The Bogquake Tapes are the result of a young going no-where space rock band being hijacked by local musical maverick Gordon Stranger in 1973, the new band started recording almost immediately which was a wise move by Stranger as his overbearing behaviour led to the other musicians quitting after a couple of days blaming the smell in the building (2)! So what have we got here musically? I've listened to it several times and it is a strangely beguiling half an hour of mostly instrumental music that at times is very 70s and at other times transcends time periods. Think 11 mins of ambient Tangerine Dreamy type stuff, then 3 mins of an early 'Hawkwind' demo with vocals that are indecipherable (to me) but are the more interesting for that, then a dramatic foreboding piece that you can imagine being used as a soundtrack to a mysterious army's approach! At 19 mins it's psychy space rock that segues into ethereal flutes! OK I know it reads like a musical hotch potch but it works, hangs together and is a really intriguing 33 mins of music. I really like it and credit to HUM for releasing it.   


Bibliography.
(1) https://hookland.wordpress.com/about/
(2) https://harmonicunionmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-bogquake-tapes and Press Release