Foster Neville - Through Lands Of Ghosts (2026)

'Through Lands of Ghosts' is an album which takes as its working premise and overall framework H. V. Morton's 'In Search of...' and 'Through Lands of...' books with their series of vignettes taking in everything from the smoke of industrial chimneys to the delicate light inside cathedrals and based on travels around Britain in the earlier part of the 20th century. On this occasion, however, it's with a twist as the stopping off points for geographical and literary musings are either populated by ghostly presences from the past, or are themselves the merest whisperings of things.

A sense of a journey is present from the outset with the Highlands suggested via 'Antlers of Water' (a bank of vintage Windows 98 PCs trigger both fragments of music on old AWE32 soundcards and Google translate phrases; for ‘Voices From An Abandoned Village’ the same method triggers taped 'voices' from a 1990s radio broadcast concerning the long-dead inhabitants of a village).

The tendency of stories to grow around certain places is represented by 'The Long Sleep of West Kennet Long Barrow', which is based upon both the barrow and the clearing it's in. Memories and associations of place are also tackled in 'Brake Failure at Chapel-en-le-Frith', which revisits the residue around the site of the runaway freight train in Derbyshire and the subject of the famous 1957 radio ballad.

Tidal forces seen from the Mull of Galloway - 'The Nine Tides', with their tidal rips which twirl as they meet in opposition – are the focus of another track. The album concludes with 'Torches Returning’, a classic time slip account, where modern day travellers claimed to have witnessed a crowd of people in leather jerkins carrying lighted torches. Were they witnessing the past or the future?

The limited edition vinyl release also features an appreciation of ‘Through Lands of Ghosts’ by writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair who reflects on the psychogeography of music and place in his own unique style.

Foster Neville FRSA is an experimental musician. His previous releases are The Edge of Destruction (2023) and Ulla (with Timothy Didymus) (2025) - both on Subexotic. Foster is Sound Art Editor for Trebuchet, an international luxury print magazine focusing on contemporary art. He is also Chairman of the Society for Italic Handwriting.

John Pilgrim has produced and provided the artwork for two of Foster's albums. His work is shaped by a longstanding interest in dislocated memories and curious natural environments.