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‘Hiraeth’, a Welsh word, translates roughly as a deep, melancholic longing for a lost place, person or time which perhaps never even existed. Steven Wilson uses it as a track title here, but that feeling permeates the entire journey. It’s another twist in the career of an artist who, once categorised somewhat reductively as prog, is now uncategorisable. Yes, his last album, The Overview, was card-carrying prog, but prior to that his 2020s albums mashed up genres, often draping his thoughts on life, the universe and everything over electronica and neo-disco.
Requiem For A Village redraws his map again. It’s a spooky, sinister, Poe-faced creation coloured by Gothic folk and Sabbath-ish doom, infused with the spirit of The Wicker Man, the stories of M.R. James, and those creepy 70s kids’ TV shows which seemed unaware that they were flirting with the occult.
There’s also a hint of Under Milk Wood in the narration, written by XTC‘s Andy Partridge and delivered with quiet relish by David Tennant. This might give dated echoes of David Hemmings orating over an old Rick Wakeman album, but it’s carefully gauged as an ancillary, not predominant, flavour.
We’re transported to a vague, tiny British village (it feels Welsh), where time’s arrow is warping in a curious chill. The set is more mysterious than macabre, but ghosts, it’s implied, run wild. We’re introduced to “the cast of our masque”. “Each actor’s house filled with giggles and tears,” Tennant testifies. “Although you can’t see them – they’ve been here for years…”
Wilson endeavours to recapture a sense of innocence in his playing – more human flaws, less software – and that relatively organic approach serves the atmosphere he’s going for. With regular collaborator Randy McStine, drummer Russell Holzman and (on the mesmerising Murmuration) vocalist Katherine Priddy, the album coheres into subtly dramatic shapes. Obscured by clouds in parts, wilfully, but that bolsters the mystique.
The heavy riffing of the title track is balanced by the profound patience exhibited on On Chapel Slope; the whisper-to-a-scream build of A Basket Of Bees is followed by the closing 11-minute suite, where prog’s back in town (with its metal mates) and means business. It can switch from the Alan Parsons Project to Tindersticks within seconds. The church bells linger, as does the eerie chanting – presumably of those villagers as they lurch nearer and nearer. Wilson’s detour to the dark side will, gratifyingly, haunt you.
