John Haycock 'What Remains' LP

What Remains is the new album from John Haycock featuring Daniel Bridgwood Hill and produced by resonance founders Matthew Williams and Adam Kahan, mastered in Berlin by Arnold Kasar.    

It’s a long way from its West African origins, but John Haycock’s relationship with the 24 stringed Kora began by hearing it on Market Street - Manchester city centre’s bustling/chaotic heaven/hell.

‘You couldn’t miss it bouncing across the buildings. It had a Pied Piper effect. It drew people in, creating this bubble of tranquillity and somehow separating you from the consumerist chaos of the city centre’.  

The busker (if we can rather reductively call him that) crafting this compelling quietude was Gambian griot and kora master, Jali Nyonkoling Kuyateh - playing a near 100 year-old instrument handed down through his family. Transfixed, John struck up a conversation and persuaded an initially sceptical Jali that this late teen was serious in wanting to learn the instrument.    

John immersed himself in the doubled bridged harp/lute hybrid. Jali’s mesmeric Mancunian street corner masterclass made him see its potential.    

During 15 years of practice, he dreamed of combining the instrument with electronic and woodwind elements. Informed also by Kora masters like Toumani Diabaté and Ballaké Sissoko (‘they're just on another level’) he has integrated the sound into his own hybrid ambient, minimalist and spiritual jazz fusion.  ‘I'm influenced by people outside of the West African tradition of the instrument too. Tony Scott, Wacław Zimpel, Alice Coltrane, Alabaster DePlume, Nico Georis - people working with tone, repetition, and a kind of meditative quality. Also Domenique Dumont. Nils Frahm’s approach is entirely different but has had an equally great impact on me'.    

It’s a contemplative and ethereal sound with added dub-inflections which is enhanced in live performance - where the mix is always fresh and fluid. There are no computers involved and any emerging sequences are either hand played or are effects generated analog loops. There’s a feeling of the ancient and mysterious Popol Vuh of In Den Garten Pharaos. Perhaps Tangerine Dream at their most serene, but an otherworldliness emerges from the combination of light, sound and setting which has its own dimension.   ‘What Remains’ features Daniel Bridgwood Hill and was produced by resonance founders Matthew Williams and Adam Kahan.    

It was recorded live at Hope Baptist Chapel in Hebden Bridge in 2023, and alongside the kora itself, features clarinet, violin, guitar and electronics.    

The recording was then ‘worldized’ at Todmorden Unitarian Church. This is a a term coined by acclaimed cinematic sound designer, Walter Murch - meaning to play a previously recorded sound through loudspeakers in a second real world setting, re-recording the output though multiple carefully placed microphones in order to capture the natural reverberation and acoustic architecture of secondary live spaces.    

The release also incorporates ‘worldized’ performance elements from Wainsgate Chapel, Hebden Bridge, The Portico Library in Manchester and the former Post Office sorting house in Todmorden. It’s an ongoing exploration which will always evolve.    

The album is the culmination of 3 years of events and experimentation - folding in John’s live musical reactions to the refracted light and natural reverb within the spaces themselves.  

Everything is in flux. Gates are always open.