Mên-an-Tol
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Visiting ancient sites to make music to visit ancient sites with.
Recorded at Mên An Tol and at various stones, places, and sites within Penwith, Cornwall.
Using Kernewek titles for each piece of music, these compositions are of and from the Stones of Kernow.
Recorded over the course of 2025 CE.
Limited to 200 copies.
The Tower
The Tower is a 4 track EP of ambient drones and electronic meditations recorded by Matthew Shaw during a two week sabbatical as artist in residence at the Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland.
The building is owned by Bill Drummond of the KLF. For years Bill has sentenced artists to live and work in the Tower and to integrate into the local community for the duration of their stay. Through an invitation via Caught by the River, so it was that Matthew made his way to The Tower.
“October in Cushendall is cold, November even more so and this was the time I spent inside The Tower. My days were spent either composing and recording, or taking walks down to the coast, past a standing stone and back to a café and library for warmth. The music composed in The Tower was made using my daily experiences and impressions of Cushendall and the good people that call it home. I recorded squeaking doors, creaking steps, roaring fires, boy racers, snatches of conversations from the pubs, café and streets. My approach was part audio collage and part composition. The elements were then sculpted together into their final form. I used Bill’s unamplified gold flying V guitar, small hand held synthesizers and an old 1970’s Moog Prodigy, a loop and reverb pedal plus the natural ambience of The Tower itself. Whilst fighting the cold in as many layers of clothing as I could wear.”
The Tower EP is released 4th April, 2025 as a 4 track, 7 inch coloured vinyl record and digital download on the Buried Treasure label.
Hepworth and the Cornish Landscape
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Hepworth loved walking out into the wild Cornish landscape, and even before she moved there in 1939, she was aware of comparisons made between her abstract work and ancient stone megaliths. But how much closer did living in St Ives bring her to this ancient and fiercely independent county? Was this avant-garde artist welcomed, or did she remain an outsider?
Artists Lally MacBeth and Matthew Shaw live in Cornwall and created the Stone Club to celebrate pre-historic sites. Now their passion for dolmans, stone circles and standing stones leads them to reverse the gaze – to look at Hepworth sculptures in the light of ancient sites, comparing her work with the megaliths carved by the hand of sculptors over four thousand years ago.
Hepworth moved to Cornwall, with her second husband Ben Nicholson and four children, to escape the threat of bombing in London. She stayed for the rest of her life, an extraordinary decision for someone who wanted to be recognised internationally. But from this tiny fishing village she made megalithic monuments which would be exported across the world - to the UN in New York, and to London, and Paris.
Lally and Matthew enlist the knowledge and passion of Andy Norfolk, ancient stone expert and Hepworth fan, and James Kitto, photographer and President of CASPN (the Cornish Ancient Sites Protection Network), to visit The Merry Maidens and Mên-an-Tol.
They visit the Trewyn Studios in St Ives to look at the tools Barbara Hepworth used to make her sculptures and to talk to Tate Curator of Exhibitions, Katie Norris. They also hear stories of her working practise from acclaimed sculptor Brian Wall, one of her studio assistants back in the 1950s.
Finally, they watch the ceremony for initiating new bards at the Gorsedh Kernow in Callington, seeing close up a ritual that Hepworth herself went through in 1968. Sue Hill, of Wildworks in Redruth, and Kurt Jackson, poet and landscape painter, describe the sensation of being barded and recognised by Cornwall for their passion and their art.
Producer Sara Jane Hall
Ithell Colquhoun - Tate Player
I have contributed to the latest story on Tate Player about Ithell Colquhoun. My voice appears alongside Emma Chambers, Amy Hale, Bharti Kher, Stewart Lee, Lally Macbeth, Katy Norris, Gwenno Saunders & Richard Shillitoe. With Sound Design, Written and performed by Gwenno, Additional processing and mixing by Rhys Edwards.
Listen Here to The Living Stones
Tales of Cushendall
Caught by the River spent 2023 sentencing writers and artists to time in a tower in a far corner of these islands. Matthew Shaw, the seventh person to have served time in the Curfew Tower, shares two audio relics from his residency…
A Journey To The Stones
Limited edition CD in 4 panel Digipak, shipping out on or around September 6, 2024
Walking ancient Trackways.
Each place contains its own atmosphere, each stone its own resonance. Stones of Kernow and an old favourite ancient dolmen in Dorset provided the inspiration and locations for the recordings you will hear within this album. Stone circles, standing stones, ancient trackways, quoits, carns, cairns, hillforts and sacred springs have all contributed to the sounds within. Places such as these have long provided inspiration for me over the years but never before have I so literally composed a collection of music in such a dedicated way.
After recordings were collected and sampled the resulting compositions were sculpted and formed in an old granite cottage in Penryn. Granite is ubiquitous in Cornwall, its lithic presence along with quartz and lichen. Moss and leaf moulds that grow, rest and settle on the stones themselves.
Matthew Shaw, beneath the Tor, Glastonbury, July 2024
GWREIDDIAU
Recorded for and first played at the neolithic burial chamber Bryn Celli Ddu as part of GWREIDDIAU.
GWREIDDIAU / ROOTS was the 10th year anniversary of the Bryn Celli Ddu landscape project, based at the internationally important 5,000 year old passage tomb, Ynys Môn.
Think Creatively worked in collaboration with Cadw, Manchester Metropolitan University, GeoMôn, Galeri Caernarfon, Oriel Môn, Stone Club, Anglesey Druid Order, Rhys Mwyn and supported Welsh artists to deliver a series of workshops, walks, talks and excavations.
released August 2, 2024
Composed performed and produced by Matthew Shaw.
Featuring in order of appearance;
Gwydion
Oliver Smith
Tristan Rhys Williams
Chunky Dancer
Ciaran Hodgers
Pat Davies
Rik Warren
Anghared Evans
Manon Prysor
Druidic Passage
I have witten a new piece for Caught By The River about a pilgrimage to Iona.
“Along with fellow members of The Druid Order, Matthew Shaw makes a 556-mile pilgrimage to the Island of Iona.”
bloom
I have written about stones, landscape and gardens for the issue 16 of bloom. Taking in Ithell Colquhoun, Barbara Hepworth and Derek Jarman along the way
The Still Silence at the Centre
Six ambient compositions, recorded on the numinous pathways and modern roads around Britain. these pieces come from sacred sites and urban sites of intrique. Looking back into histories and mysteries, folklore and OS maps.
Those that Sparkle in the Sky was created thanks to funding from The Blue Heart Trust
Ancient Pathways and Modern Roads
Thank you to Caught by the River for publishing this new piece I’ve written about ancient Dorset and deep time from the A35.
Beyond the touch of the living
A piano composition recorded in Firle, East Sussex.
Crwydro Cymru Hynafol
Crwydro Cymru Hynafol was recorded on a series of walks stopping at Bryn Celli Ddu Burial Chamber, Din Lligwy stone settlement, Gop Hill Cairn, Moel Arthur Hillfort
Resurgence & Ecologist
I have interviewd the artist Jeremy Deller for the November / December 2023 issue of Resurgence & Ecologist.
Dark Mountain - Eight Fires
I have written about stones and our connection to place, about moments of inner peace and silence for the latest issue of Dark Mountain.
This is a book of practices, testimony, tools, ceremony, stories, art and poetry, inspired by the 82 people who went into their local territories to make an embodied connection with the more-than-human worlds, and brought back its treasures. It has been created both by the ‘firekeepers’ who took part in the workshops, and by artists and writers who have responded to the ideas behind our collaborative practice. It is shaped around the eight fires, following the themes we focused on, with the opening of the practice at winter solstice, and a holding fast at the zenith of summer solstice, looking forward and back at the cycles of the year.
Gently Johnny Stone Club remix
The Stone Club Remix of Gently Johnny by Katy J Pearson & H. Hawkline
SEVEN ROOMS
Assorted Materials
from a “Paper Hotel”
Edited by Dominic J. Jaeckle & Jess Chandler
I have poems and photographs in this new collection published in Autumn 2023 in a limited edition—edited by Tenement’s Dominic J. Jaeckle, Prototype’s Jess Chandler, and designed and typeset by Traven T. Croves (Matthew Stuart & Andrew Walsh-Lister, of Tenement, Prototype, and Bricks from the Kiln)
HISTORIES & HAUNTINGS: AN EVENING OF SCREENINGS AND READINGS
EVENT: HISTORIES & HAUNTINGS: AN EVENING OF SCREENINGS AND READINGS
DATE: 19th October 2023 - 19th October 2023
TIME: DOORS OPEN : 6.30PM - 9.30PM
VENUE: SWEDENBORG HALL
PRICE: FREE TICKETS (BOOKING ESSENTIAL)
PARTICIPANT/S: CLAUDIA BARTON | RENCHI BICKNELL | JACK CATLING | ALLEN FISHER | ANDREW KÖTTING | MATTHEW SHAW | IAIN SINCLAIR
The Hurdy-Gurdy Song Stone Club Extended Mix
The Stone Club Remix of The Hurdy-Gurdy Song by Local Psycho (Jem Finer & Jimmy Cauty)
I have written a piece for the latest issue of Resurgence & Ecologist about stumbling on a way of creating not only a thriving and eclectic community, but also a new (ancient) inclusive space based on our shared reverence for and love of… well, old stones.
You can read the full article here
Painting of Men-an-Tol by Sarah Vivian
Ignota - Moon Journal
I have written a piece about my creative process for Ignota this month, incuding a never before heard piece of music from my Landscapes of Ancient Britain project. I write about West Penwith, Ithell Colquhoun, ancient scents and alchemical figures.
You can subscribe to Ignota here
Matthew Shaw's version of Spacemen 3's 'Mary Anne' from Glass Remade/Remodelled
“And here we are…. and so for the 40th Anniversary of the original
label wehave this collection of old songs made new by old friends
and new, for the kids, old and young. Many thanks to all who took
part and God bless us everyone.
David Barker Stoke Newington, London August 2022
Glass Records remains one of the great unsung British independent
labels of the 1980s. Founded and fronted by the charismatic rock
provocateur David E. Barker, Glass blazed a trail with seminal
releases by the likes of Jacobites, Spacemen 3, The Pastels and
many many more. They even became the first British label with the
good taste to domestically release a record by an obscure mid-west
American bar-band called TheReplacements. Salute.
Laurence Bell, Domino Records
I love Dave Barker for loads of reasons the main one is though he
knows music lives for music and breathes music.
Alan McGee, Creation Records”
Broadside Hacks - Barbry Allen (Matthew Shaw remix)
Download here
I am very excited to be part of EARTH / PERCENT’s Earth Day Campaign! Over 100 artists have contributed a combination of new, unheard, exclusive and archival tracks which you can purchase via the EarthPercent Bandcamp page.
Sales of these tracks contribute to the charity’s Grantmaking Fund, which supports organisations doing vital work to help tackle the climate emergency.
Head to the EarthPercent Bandcamp account to buy our track and help support this important cause. Each track is only available for a limited time, so act quick!
#EarthPercentEarthDay #NOMUSICONADEADPLANET
‘Holding Hands In The Dark,’ comes as a 2 CD, 6 panel softpack designed by Maria Makripoulias. The first 300 copies also include4 specially-designed postage stamps.
Featuring new tracks by Snowdrops, Matthew Shaw, The Leaf Library, D Rothon, Franck Alba, Mark Fry, Hilary Robinson, Angèle David-Guillou, Mücha, Glen Johnson, Oliver Cherer, Statues In Fog
‘Holding Hands In The Dark’ is available from the Second Language Bandcamp page
Crowlink EP
Today, Shirley Collins is pleased to release a new EP, Crowlink.
The EP is named after a particular hamlet in the Seven Sisters (a series of undulating hills on the Sussex coast) with a pathway that overlooks the English Channel which is one of Shirley’s favourite places to be.
Picking up from Heart’s Ease’s finale, the Crowlink EP is a collection of songs sung by Shirley Collins and featuring field recordings from the edge of the cliffs at Crowlink, Firle Church and Etchingham recorded by Matthew Shaw. Shaw also produced the EP and played additional instrumentation across the EP’s five songs.
Alongside the Crowlink announcement, Shirley Collins shares “My Sailor Boy” from the EP, which finds Shirley singing over a moody, atmospheric fusion of sounds and demonstrates a more experimental side to the folk veteran. Elsewhere on the EP, Ossian Brown’s hurdy-gurdy rings through on “The Rose and the Briar” and the artwork is by author, painter, film maker & provocateur Brian Catling.
Crowlink at Charleston
Sold Out
We are pleased to announce that the concert will now take place on the outdoor stage at Charleston (subject to weather). Please note that this space is uncovered and in the open air, so please dress accordingly.
If you have tickets and are planning not to come along please do let us know, at the earliest opportunity, as we'd love to give others the opportunity to see this unique event.
A bus will leave Lewes station for Charleston at 6pm and return at 10pm. Places are limited so please book in advance by emailing events@charleston.org.uk. Tickets are £5 return.
Arrive from 6pm to explore the unique sound installation in the garden by sound artist Matthew Shaw features recorded words and poetry from Shirley Collins and Brian Catling, and many more luminaires. The performances starts at 7.30
Journey with us from Firle Church as we walk up over the Downs to the edge of the cliff at Crowlink 1.916. Looking out to sea, listening to the song of the skylarks, the wind whipping through the bent over trees, the waves crashing against the white cliffs, the pull of the tide across chalk, shingle and stone.
Shirley Collins leads us with her recital of the English folk songs collected over seventy years. With poetry from Brian Catling and Matthew Shaw and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virgina Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury group in Sussex.
These poems and extracted writings voiced in order of appearance by by Shirley Collins, Hannah Peel, Jeremy Deller, Lally MacBeth, Benjamin Zephaniah, Heather Leigh, Laura Barton, Zakia Sewell, Peter Owen Jones, Amy Grantham, Matthew Shaw, Mark Fry, Sam Lee & Virginia Woolf.
All music performed by Matthew Shaw with special guests Ossian Brown on hurdy-gurdy and Penny MacBeth on recorders.
The garden sound installation will be on site for a further week following the Shirley Collins events.
Please be aware the gardens can accommodate only a limited capacity. Those wishing to promenade the grounds may experience a wait to allow the previous group to exit the gardens.
The café will be open, serving delicious Italian street food from Caccia & Tails, or feel free to bring a picnic to eat in the centenary gardens/by the pond.
The galleries will be open and free to ticket holders, subject to capacity, with exhibitions by Nina Hamnett & Lisa Brice.
Keep an eye on the facebook book page for further updates:
31st July 1st August
We are looking forward to seeing you at this unique event in the heart of the downs.
And finally...
Shirley will be in conversation with Stewart Lee on Wednesday 7 July at 7pm, giving a first-hand account of an extraordinary life. For more information and to book
Once the event is sold out/if you need to resell your ticket:
We would strongly recommend that if you are purchasing re-sell tickets that you buy through SEE tickets re-sell option than from a person directly. If you are buying re-sell physical tickets, previously bought at Resident record shop, send through an image to Melting Vinyl on messenger or an email of the tickets for them to confirm they are genuine (ticketing@meltingvinyl.co.uk). If you are unable to attend and have bought tickets through Charleston please get in touch with the box office directly.
Verse & Chorus
Listen & download here
An exquisite corpse of an "I” played out in a multiplicity of voices, VERSE & CHORUS is an experimental act of collaborative reworking that quilts cuts from two manuscripts into an imagined third object (collaging verses from Nadia de Vries' and Dominic Jaeckle's forthcoming poetry collections with Dostoyevsky Wannabe, respectively I FAILED TO SWOON and 36 EXPOSURES). Scored by found sounds, borrowed songs and original music from Matthew Shaw, Mark Lanegan and Duke Garwood, VERSE & CHORUS carries readings from Nadia de Vries; Cíntia Gil; Diamanda La Berge Dramm; Mark Lanegan; Stanley Schtinter; Becket Flannery; and Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset in an exchange of ideas, images and allusions.
The Electric Muse Revisited
Out now is The Electic Muse Revisited, with a section on Crowlink, the piece of music by Shirley Collins, Matthew Shaw & Ossian Brown.
First published in 1975, at the height of the folk-rock boom, the critically acclaimed Electric Muse chronicled the story of the folk movement, from roots to revival, featuring new interviews and photographs, this edition brings the fascinating narrative up to date.
Buy your copy here
Masstransfer: A Zinethology
There is a chapter in the new Masstransfer book by Ryan Andreson, which has just been published. “Take an indie trip through 25 years of dreampop, shoegaze, post-rock, ambient and electronic music with Ryan Anderson - musician and former editor of the music zine Masstransfer.”
Buy your copy here
Hotel #7
Shipping from today, with five poems from Matthew Shaw within, ‘Shell ... ‘Found’ ...‘Spells’ ... ‘Time’ ... Order here
Crowlink 0.5
Crowlink 0.5 a film and installation will appear with Shirley Collins and the Lodestar Band as part of the Barbican event on Sunday 23rd May.
Directed by Grant Gee, with sound installation by Matthew Shaw, poetry by Brian Catling, featuing the voices of Shirley Collins, Hannah Peel, Benjamin Zephaniah, Heather Leigh, Laura Barton, Lally MacBeth, Matthew Shaw, & Zakia Sewell. Hurdy gurdy by Ossian Brown.
Atmosphere of Mona
Audiobook
Released today is the audio book for Atmospbere of Mona, with recordings from the places I visited and wrote about in the book. The sounds of Anglesey, West Penwith, the Dorset Coast, the Sussex Coast and the Cheshire countryside
Shipping Forecast
by Dominic James Jaeckle & Diamanda La Berge Dramm & Matthew Shaw
Listen & download here
A utility amongst the swallows is their music;
they use it to avoid collision.
John Cage,
36 Mesostics RE: and not RE: Duchamp (1978)
Grounded in a book that collects a roll-of-film’s worth of co-dependent photographs and prose-poems by Hoagy Houghton and Dominic Jaeckle (36 Exposures, forthcoming from Dostoyevsky Wannabe), Shipping Forecast is a quilt of first- and second-hand reticulated reflections and ratiocinations—a ‘disembodied voice-over’ for a set of absent images, memories and other assorted totem poles—read and recorded by Diamanda La Berge Dramm (the anchor) and sunk in a veritable garden of noises, drones, field recordings and found sounds by Matthew Shaw (the ocean).
Hotel #7
Hotel magazine are publishing five new poems by me in their next issue, accompanied by photographs.
Hotel #7 Includes
Adrian Bridget, , Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Elizabeth Harris, Helena Gomà, Nadia de Vries, Josef Winkler, translated by Adrian Nathan West, Greg Tate, Helen Cammock, Frederic Tuten & Andrzej Žuławski, Lily Hackett, Percival Everett, Alisha Dietzman, Joan Brossa, translated by Cameron Griffiths, Manuela Moser, Sam Riviere, Yasmine Seale, Jeffrey Vallance, Raul Guerrero, Mark Lanegan, Rebecca Jagoe, Daniel Pellizzari, translated by Rahul Bery, Matthew Shaw, Sam Buchan Watts, Nathan Salsburg, Willard Watson, Bessie Jones, Big Bill Broonzy, Texas Gladden, Margaret Barry & Eddie Sanger, Hélène Gaudy, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, Stephen Watts, David Grubbs, & Luc Sante
More details and order
Journey To Nutopia
Produced by The Cockpit as part of Cockpit Broadcast
Sunday January 31st 2021, 7pm LIVE ONLINE via Zoom, Tkts: £2
Book here
Wyrd Britain
I have written this months 3 Wyrd things article for Wyrd Britain. I was invited to write about three oddly, wonderfully, weirdly British things that have influenced my work. I chose Shirley Collins, Ithell Colquhoun & Doctor Who. You can read why here
Hotel
Many thanks to Hotel for publising a selection of verse and images from Atmosphere of Mona today on their website. you can view here
Caught by the River
An exclusive extract from Matthew Shaw’s upcoming prose poetic / photographical ode to the annual cycle of seasons — with an accompanying track written and performed by Shaw and Mark Fry.