Album Review: Heligoland’s Karen Vogt releases the shimmering, ambient solo album ‘Haunted Woodland, Volume 5’.

Australian-born Karen Vogt plays in the Melbourne dream pop shoegaze band Heligoland – who a few years back toured Europe and forgot to return home, ending up based in Paris. And while Heligoland have been relatively quite (although there is movement on the horizon), Vogt has continued to explore the world of atmospheric, ambient dreamy music, engaging in a number of collaborations with European artists (see work with Pepo Galán) as well as being actively engaged in the scene through PR and production work.

Her new solo piece ‘Haunted Woodland, Volume 5’ contains six exquisite compositions that have been inspired by the passage of time and the surrounding environment. Vogt says:

People are haunted, just as buildings and landscapes can feel haunted. We leave our thoughts and feelings in certain places more than others. The emotions and memories we carry intermingle with the spaces we occupy and pass by daily. Sometimes, a place, or a landscape, evokes a certain feeling within us.

These emotions become imprinted in every note on this album; a series of delicate and ethereal tendrils of sound that weave themselves in the ether, glowing and, as the title itself suggests, haunting.

Opening track ‘Love Comes’ starts with a synth drone and ghostly whispered vocals from Scottish musician Hamish Mackintosh (aka FUEL / The Wave Room), weaving a poetic thread across the top. The lyrics are about the loss of happiness and the transience of love: melancholic and achingly beautiful. This is not so much a song but an emotion played out over six minutes through an ambient blush that is immersive as a warm body of water.

Vogt’s yearning vocals enter in ‘Spirit’ above echoed, delayed crisp guitars – layered and as delicate as a silken veil floating in the sky. The repetition of the title creates a deliciously hypnotic effect, building up a heavenly chorus.

‘Air On My Skin’ is sensuous and languid, as Mackintosh returns to duet with Vogt. It’s imbued with a sense of longing as the two vocals intertwine across the gentle strum of guitars. You feel like you need a cup of tea and a lie down after this.

A gently crunch of leaves underfoot introduce ‘Left Me’ as Vogt’s velvet vocals lament above the gently splashing, dappling guitars: a chorus of her vocals layered like leaves in the Autumn, ghostly and dreamy. This more than any other track encapsulates the source of inspiration for the album – like a central point of focus:

I pass a cluster of six trees on my walks along the Marne River. These six trees stood out due to their neat arrangement. Two rows of three, or three rows of two? Why were they planted this way? Huddled so close together, like a small audience bearing witness to the humans, animals, and the river passing by. I wondered about the people whose lives had come and gone, the thoughts they deposited in that place, the conversations, and the changes in time and seasons that these trees had absorbed as they grew up towards the sky. They became the focal point and inspiration as I gathered my improvised material for this six-track album.

‘In Another’ further builds on this – an eight minute study that has a brief distant percussion in the distance like claps of thunder as Vogt’s vocals wander across a simple, stark sonic landscape with the tender touch of Dusty Springfield in the delivery. It’s the spaces in between that create a haunting atmosphere, the vocals a salve or unguent that flows just under the surface. Little blips at the outro create an fascinating contrapuntal effect as the song fades.

Final track ‘Love Goes’ captures the themes that is perhaps threaded through these pieces – transience verses immutability – perhaps a contrast between the temporary nature of human experience and emotion and the infinite nature of existence and spirituality. The track is a wash of synths – an atmosphere perfectly captured in sound.

This album is essentially a votive to Vogt’s perception of her surrounding environment, beautifully sculpted and formed from guitar, vocals, and a few effects pedals, with bass on one track, and a couple of field recordings made near the six trees. It is a haunting and beautiful album.

‘Haunted Woodland, Volume 5’ is released through UK label Wayside and Woodland Recordings and is available through the link above.