One of the themes of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go is the uncanniness of British landscapes. It ties together the horrifying history of British colonialism and the fruitless, abandoned futures of the nation’s worst-offs, narrated by a clone who has been created by the government with the intention of harvesting her organs. Through its gothic, eerie depictions of England, the novel examines the empty outstretched future of Britain in conjunction with its haunting colonial past of pain and terror.
Luce Mawdsley’s expansive, instrumental debut Northwest & Nebulous does the same thing. With an experimental flair, Mawdsley pulls from folk and Americana to illustrate how it feels to live in and love the North West – and how those feelings often jumble with anxiety and disappointment. It doesn’t sit still; the crawling unease of “Latex Feather” evokes almost the opposite emotions than its jaunty follow-up “Roosting,” which frolics along all blasé. Through sound alone, Mawdsley is able to celebrate the beauty of the surrounding landscape while exposing its dreadful underbelly.
Perhaps Mawdsley’s experiences as both nonbinary and neurodivergent inform the fluid nature of the record. With how it crawls and spins and stops still in all different directions, Northwest & Nebulous argues that multiple truths can exist at once: contradiction in conversation with itself. At the record’s core sits a tension produced by the complicated nature of two opposing ideas filling up the same space. That they can invoke such nuances of emotion in only half an hour is a testament to their ability as a composer.
England’s bloody, rancid history is inescapable. The landscapes feel haunted because they are – by ghosts and phantoms and footsteps. Northwest & Nebulous acknowledges this in its abstract and spectral instrumentals. It could easily soundtrack a weird and horrible folk horror, but its experimental twists on the traditional offer some more hopeful perspectives on what we are to do with the land that surrounds us.
