kittog
there's something stressful and gloomy about this... it feels like the exact soundtrack of your daily life in a busy city that moves far too fast for you to keep up.
Favorite track: Rapid Transport Links.
Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan's new album, Your Community Hub, compellingly continues his sonic exploration of the New Towns movement. The issues the councillors, planners, and architects set out to solve still resound and echo throughout society.
For the latest instalment in this unique project, Gordon Chapman-Fox turns his laser eye to focus on Community and the Community Centres that populated Warrington and Runcorn in order to provide all the facilities people needed within a five minute walk from their home. These planning ideas predated the current discussions of fifteen minute cities by fifty years.
Those intervening years have seen a decline in our community centres and services: handy access to a GP or dentist, Post Offices, youth clubs, local shops, banking and much more. Successive governments have undermined and eroded those basic services. The decline in community services has also been matched with a decline in community and shared experiences with a knock-on effect on the population's health and well-being. The disastrous austerity policies imposed over the last 15 years have exacerbated this long, slow reduction in available spaces for people to meet and communicate, with seemingly no recognition of the societal impact that causes. Short-termism at the expense of the community and how we live our lives.
Margaret Thatcher's statement that "there is no such thing as society" has been taken as a mission statement by successive Conservative governments who have aimed to remove as much support and communality from the citizens as possible. It continues now, the wrong-headed idea that everyone can be left to fend for themselves.
Chapman-Fox's latest album decries the cruelty of where we find ourselves in 2024 and his quiet incandescence about the loss of optimism for what communities should be and could be. It's his most powerful work, and as always, it will deeply resonate with those who tune in to his unique vision and unparalleled productions.
All four WRNTDP albums to date have had increasing critical and commercial success. Your Community Hub will resonate with anyone with a social conscience, anyone who feels how badly the state has let us down.
As ever, beautifully packaged and designed by Gordon, the album artwork features photographs from the archive of the architect Peter Garvin, which was kindly provided by his son Richard Garvin. The photographs show Peter's work on the Castlefield Community Centre, a sleek modernist structure clad in white ceramic tiles.
credits
released May 24, 2024
Music and sleeve design by Gordon Chapman-Fox.
Mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw.
Illustrations by Michael Cooke.
Original photos and drawings provided by Richard Garvin, from the archive of architect Peter Garvin
supported by 444 fans who also own “Your Community Hub”
This is as good as the officially released WRNTDP titles on CIS. Very pleased to pick it up, where the pieces here are longer than most on the records they benefit from the slow unwinding they are afforded. The 18 minute live set excerpt is particularly immersive. Wouldn't be the worst idea in the world to release this on vinyl as a companion to the inevitable repressing of This Nation's Most Central Location. Great stuff. Oh and you get a cool magazine to read as well. Awesome. shaun rogan
supported by 361 fans who also own “Your Community Hub”
Such a great idea translating stamps into music. Four brilliant tracks hotter than a Bunsen burner flame. I would love to see this issued on vinyl. roblove1
supported by 361 fans who also own “Your Community Hub”
Great album, love the dreamy nostalgic spacey-ness. The old educational samples transport me back to early school days in the TV room and when all we had to worry about was if we were wearing the right trainers or swapping Panini football stickers. vsep13
A third long-player of timeless, punchy house music from heralded purveyor of deep house, Berlin-based DJ Christopher Rau. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 22, 2024