Hawksmoor

British musician James McKeown channels dream research, the occult, and early electronic music into his atmospheric, filmic solo endeavor Hawksmoor. He introduced the project at the start of 2018 via the fictional hauntological soundtrack Hawksmoor, a collection of entrancing Moog synthesizer compositions centered on London churches distinguished by their singular, mystical design. Later Hawksmoor releases such as the 2020 album Methods of Dreaming retained synthesizers, drum machines, and tape loops while adding ethereal guitar layers. With Telepathic Heights in 2023, Hawksmoor summoned 1970s German kosmische music, and Oneironautics in 2024 broadened those textures by folding in British ambient and progressive traditions.

Prior to launching Hawksmoor in 2017, the Bristol-based McKeown participated in multiple groups and endeavors, among them the progressive rock-tinged Hi-Fiction Science, founded in 2008. He also issued a fabricated Christian acid folk record under the name Frugal Puritan, a somber singer/songwriter album as the Dead Astronaut, and several limited experimental works credited to himself. He subsequently shifted toward primarily instrumental pieces drawing from Nicholas Hawksmoor, the English Baroque architect active in the 17th and 18th centuries. The debut Hawksmoor appeared on Environmental Studies in early 2018, its tracks titled for particular churches featuring esoteric forms like pyramids and obelisks instead of conventional Christian iconography. Live at the Cube, Bristol, captured during Environmental Studies’ Research #1 event, surfaced in 2019. The follow-up 201984 took a chillier, more industrial direction as a response to Brexit and global instability. Methods of Dreaming, Hawksmoor’s first outing on Spun Out of Control, borrowed its title from a paper by Prof. R.J. Bennett of the Milton Keynes Institute for Neurological Dream Research that examined consciousness and lucid dreaming.

Concrete Island, a long-distance collaboration with horror synth artist the Heartwood Institute (Jonathan Sharp), emerged in 2021. It was followed by On Prescription, a solo album addressing oncology side effects. Hawksmoor next issued the J.G. Ballard-inspired Crystal World EP through the Castles in Space Subscription Library series. Saturnalia, an “electronic folk horror” album, came out on Library of the Occult in 2022. The ethereal, crystalline Head Coach arrived on Spun Out of Control as the label’s inaugural CD release. Telepathic Heights, which channeled Krautrock figures such as Cluster, Michael Rother, and Ash Ra Tempel, landed on Soul Jazz Records in 2023. Oneironautics, issued in 2024, summoned those same artists alongside Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and the Durutti Column.