Part audio essay, part crypt-synth record, part junglite mutant bass music, part unfinished project. Part Dagonian fanfiction, part CCRU esoterica, part outsider theory of time, part abstract stroll through ruins and shorelines. By The North Sea is seemingly everything, and no thing at all. Its fishy contours slither outside categories and straight narratives: it’s a sonic object published by Hyperdub and its author is Robin Mackay, but everything else about it is perplexing.
Now that I think about it, even saying that it has an author might be a box too many. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Is there something else By The North Sea solidly is? One could say it’s a tale of losses.
The spoken word passages that span the record from front to back recount the fate of people and things and geographies forever vanished: the death of Mark Fisher, friend of the (alleged) author, the sunken city of Dunwich, the gurgling lore surrounding H. P. Lovecraft’s Dagon, the mad ride of time-travelling transcendental philosopher Rudolph Templeton, and more. It’s a knot more than a plot: various stories weave a weird tale of things lost but lingering.
But, again, it’s no solid footing: the tale is told by so many tongues and some of them are plainly fictional. The living, the dead and the never-has-been mingle cheek to cheek. Everyone involved seems more of a mask slipping from no face at all than a real someone. Mackay seems more of a placeholder to keep track of things drifting apart than an actual capital-A-author. There’s no one there, just many passing.
Is it a depressing listen than? A sob story? Not at all. It’s tragic, but this passing is also a powerful force. Time cuts deep, but what marvels in letting go is a recurrent theme. The point and mood of the record, again, are not one, but ambiguous at best and legion at worse.
The sound too seems to be always on the threshold of fading: echoes of deep junglist rackets and dusty synths circle, sometimes interrupted by eldritch chants and some other surprises I won’t spoil for you. It goes in waves and there’s something odd underneath.
Yeah, okay, but what’s By The North Sea deep down? Maybe a prophecy, for all I can tell. The first time I listened to it I was in Catania. The city was covered in black soot – Etna had just erupted. The ashes were all over me, sticking to my sweat. There was a sense of drowning all over. It was August 20th, H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday. Odd coincidences? Meaningful synchronicities? The line sometimes blurs and discernment is mostly unhelpful. Probably that’s all you need to know about this record.
