(2019) Justin Hopper & Sharron Kraus - Chanctonbury Rings


Review:
Chanctonbury Rings begins with a declaration: “Time had gone soft at the crossroads… and let me tell you how.” Justin Hopper’s book, Old Weird Albion (published in 2017 by Penned in the Margins) mapped personal identity across the deep-worn trackways of the South Downs. The trail leads to the myth-shrouded Chanctonbury Rings hillfort on the chalk ridge above Steyning, in Sussex, slipping through a thin curtain between past and present. The book has now become a powerful album of spoken word and music, with Sharron Kraus and fellow Ghost Box artist Belbury Poly. The latter (label co-founder Jim Jupp) is a familiar presence, but his haunted 1970s synths take on new meanings teamed with Kraus’ multi-layered folk contributions and Hopper’s distinctive, Pittsburgh narration. The stories of Chanctonbury, as intoned by Hopper, are both ancient and current – and exist together in layers of time. Origin myths (‘The Devil and St. Dunstan’) and 800-year old monk murders are mixed, in this “thinnest of places”, with his own childhood and adult experiences on the Downs, including a meeting with his grandmother Winnie, long dead but standing before him again dressed in “the thin beige windbreaker ubiquitous to 80s England“.  Elsewhere, strange distorted pipes play, a ghostly Morris dance hops, an accordion groans and dark synths coming rolling in like a weather front. The unlikely combination of Hopper, Kraus, and Belbury Poly produces an album layered with memories of landscape and memories of sound. It is a completely immersive experience – it is impossible to skip a track – and a fine achievement. Chanctonbury Rings is destined to become loved like the classic spoken word productions that so influence its performers.


Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits