In 2015 I was employed to write the soundtrack for a very unique project. The subject of the show was homelessness in Harrogate, a very obviously wealthy spa town in Yorkshire, England. Despite the modern and historical wealth associated with such a place, homelessness is rife within harrogate. This juxtaposition of living standards was the main focus of the piece.
The producers of the project decided the best way to deliver such a message was to run a ghost tour throught the town, focussing on stories from the town's history as well as the stories of homeless people from the area, the idea being that being homeless felt somewhat like being a ghost, as you were ignored by the better off residents of the town and felt like a complete outsider with no control over your own existence or environment.
This was incredibly interesting to me as a music producer and sound designer, as it would provide plenty of opportunity for eery and wonderous soundscapes.
Two of the stories contained within the show have contributed sounds and samples to this track.
The first was called 'Dragon Parade', and involves a homeless person walking through one of their regular haunts at night. Suddenly the street becomes illuminated. Startled, the protagonist retreats into the bushes to investigate the source of the light. To his suprise, a full chinese parade, complete with lanterns and dragons, comes marching down the street, seemingly out of nowhere. Before the protagonist has chance to wonder why there would be such a parade at 1am with not another living soul out on the streets, or wonder where it had come from when not a moment before there had been silence and darkness.... the parade is gone. He decides to go back at the same time the next week, and the week after, but never sees the parade or any sign of it again. He eventually doubts that he ever saw it at all, and concludes that it was probably a hallucination. Or was it.....
The second story focused on a rich merchant called James Montgomery, who was staying in the town during the late 19th Century. he decides to leave his lodgings to take in the night air. As he walks towards the park, he realises that the ground under his feet has turned to squelchy mud, and he is surrounded by dense forrest. Not just any forest, but a gasseous sulphur forest with yellow stalagtites clinging to the branches of trees. You see, because of the sulphorous and iron rich thermal springs upon which the town's spa baths are built, anyone coming to the area before habitation would have discovered, in Montgomery's words, "a great chemical laboratory of nature", with the eggy sulphur and rusty iron waters creating a uniquely creepy and fascinating forest ecosystem.
Realising he is lost, James Montgomery turns round and heads back in the direction he came from, hoping beyond hope that he could return to modern Harrogate and fearing he may be stuck in this surreal vision of the town as it was hundreds of years ago. Eventually he finds his way back to his lodgings, but is understandably shaken. There is no point in telling anybody where he has been, nobody would believe him. And yet it had felt so real, the sights, smells, the feel of the bark through his fingers and soft, mossy ground beneath his feet.
These stories were a lot of fun to write sounds and music to, and in this tune I have collated some of the sounds into a track i hope loosely represents how it would feel to accidentally walk into a 500 year old sulphur forest.
Artwork by Rob Aldred @ Mindspring Music
