The Towers I: Inaccessible

9 ECHOES

Location: Torteval, Guernsey

Flexagon

Flexagon is a Guernsey-based sound mangler and musical instrument collector. He is also a DJ, music producer, sound engineer and composer.

The Towers I: Inaccessible is an atmospheric exploration of Guernsey inspired by a series of towers that stand just out of reach. Field recordings, cello, cor anglais, spoken word and ambient electronica come together on this journey around Flexagon’s island home. Locations long abandoned come back to life and local landmarks tell new stories.

Flexagon’s 2020 album 7 Nocturnes East was firmly rooted in Guernsey’s coastal landscape. Since that release he has continued to work on location-based environmental music, sound art and installations both in Guernsey and remotely for projects based on places and field recordings in Wales and the Antarctic.

On The Towers I: Inaccessible, the first of a trilogy, he explores and provides a soundtrack to eight locations around the island and their history: a folly, a brutalist WWII observation tower, a Loophole tower, a windmill, a clock tower, trees used as lookout posts by German soldiers during the Occupation, a communications tower with a Cold War legacy and a concrete water storage tower. Some are familiar sights while others are hidden in plain view; all are usually off limits to the public.

Along with electronic ambience, Flexagon has written for solo cor anglais and cello, recording them together outside on location. He has also experimented with FM and shortwave radio, recorded in a clock tower, re-created the sound of hammering metal rungs into a tree, and made field recordings under a WWII observation tower and a concrete water tower. The spoken word track spans more than 200 years of Guernsey’s rich history.

Links to more music, mailing list and social media etc. https://linktr.ee/flexagon

Fort Saumarez: MP2

Fort Saumarez is a granite Martello Tower topped by a four-storey concrete WWII German observation point. Steeped in history, it looms ominously over the northern tip of L'Erée headland and, like the other island locations on the album, is off limits to the public. Flexagon uses atmospheric site recordings in this hypnotic track to lead the listener up from the shingle beach, through long-abandoned German trenches, to the shadow of the tower itself."

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Communications Tower

Over the years, masts situated here have variously relayed TV, radio and now phone signals for Guernsey. For a time during and after the cold war the tower also had the monitoring equipment/instruments for the Torteval Nuclear Monitoring Posts. Originally located in the command post of the nearby Batterie Dollmann, the monitoring post was moved in the 80s to a German bunker further away on private land. Of course it’s this bunker that I’ve recorded several albums for other Guernsey artists in. Whenever you start digging into these bigger projects there’s always a string of coincidences waiting to be uncovered.
As part of the process of making this track, I took a small FM radio transmitter (a very small legal one!) to a field near the mast, along with a shortwave radio, music player and portable audio recorder. Using all this I broadcast the drum part I’d already written over FM radio and re-recorded it to give it a hyper-compressed radio sound. It also fades in and out in parts with other signals and stations breaking through over my very low powered transmitting gadget. I also recorded a couple of sweeps across various shortwave radio bands at the same time as playing the track on location. To give a feel of what was floating on the airwaves around the mast on that particular evening, but also what is swimming around all of us, all of the time.

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Loophole Tower No.10

15 loophole towers were built around Guernsey between 1778 and 1779 to protect some of the islands most vulnerable beaches from an invasion that never came. Of these 12 still remain. At least one of these now missing Loophole towers will feature on my next album Towers II, more on that in 6 months or so.

Loophole Tower No.10 stands on Chouet headland overlooking the entrance to Grand Havre bay. The whole headland is to be quarried soon and the landscape the tower sits in will be radically changed. Lets hope this one doesn't accidentally fall in the new hole like another famous Chouet tower did some time back.

Words by Shaun Shackleton, reading/performance by James le Page. I love what Monolith Cocktail had to say about Loophole 10 as part of their review "I would suggest all is not well with this restless spirit."

Shaun's words in full below.

1802 I curse those baiseurs, the bloody Militia, who drag me away from my hearthside, my table, my woman, my blanket, to this granite bird cage, this thrice-monthly gaol cell, to guard against a foe that graces to show not its gros chou, lest a sail, in this eleven years I’ve stood waiting on it. Just my tunic buttons rattling the carronade, the laugh of a corbeau, the chatter of bracken or wind humming a song are the only voices. Oft-times it rightly feels I’ll be here forever. If not me, then my ghost.

1982 These shores begin to choke, the salt breeze suffocate. The mailboat to Weymouth, then who knows? But before a visit to Chouet. A rattle of paint tin, a hiss, then the granite turns from pink to red, seeping into the years. I’m going but I know I’ll do nothing of worth and I know for sure that I won’t last forever; perhaps, though, my name will.

2022 All but alone now in its bitterness of weeds – drunkless, dog-pissed and butterfly-kissed. Useless. Granite already marked for a new-build in Town.”

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Ozanne Tower: The Folly

Ozanne tower overlooks the west coast of Guernsey. Originally built as a Folly in the mid-1800s it has also been used as a museum and an observation tower for an anti-aircraft battery. There were plans at some point to convert it into a self-catering unit similar to the work done on one of the south coast Loophole towers, but that was over a decade ago and this tower still sits fenced in, unloved and boarded up.

Birdsong, cello, cor anglais and a passing dog walker were all recorded live on location under the tower. The St James Steinway makes an appearance in the second half, deliberately recorded in an unconventional way it sounds nothing like its usual grand self.

Thanks on this track go to John, Nerine, St. James concert hall and to the gentleman that says “evening” - whoever you are!

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Le Mont Saint Windmill

This is the location that proved the most inaccessible of all, as I couldn't get near the windmill, despite repeated attempts to contact the owners. Then just before the single came out I saw a video on Twitter of the recently restored mill actually working, for the first time possibly in over 100 years!

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St James Clock Tower

This clock tower was only location I actually accessed for the first album of the Towers project, but this part of the building is off limits to the public so the inaccessible part of the album title stands.

Thanks to all at St James Guernsey for giving me access to the Clock Tower and their support to my various schemes and projects over the years

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The Last Trees - (Location 1)

Please note - this piece is based on two locations.

Opening with the sound of metal being hammered into wood, this album track, The Last Trees doesn’t reference one particular place but several.

Along with the ominous concrete observation towers that the occupying Germans built around Guernsey during WWII, there were also at least five lookout positions hidden in pine trees around the island that I’m aware of, although it seems likely that there were more than this. Metal rungs were hammered directly into the tree’s trunks to form ladders.

As far as I know only two trees now remain with rungs visible, in La Rue de la Vrangue and the Rue a Fresnes - that one doesn’t look like it’s going to last much longer. Both are on private land, but easily visible from the road. Two other trees now felled that I believe had similar rungs and lookouts posts were at Crossways and near the Chainhouse, I’ve also read that the large pine that still stands on Les Frieteaux used to have rungs but they were removed some time ago.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in all this, so feel free to message me with any more info on these relics or corrections on my understanding of their history.

Ironically there were also wooden lookout towers built during the occupation to look like trees! These are all long gone now of course.

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The Last Trees (Location 2)

Please note - this piece is based on two locations.

Opening with the sound of metal being hammered into wood, this album track, The Last Trees doesn’t reference one particular place but several.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in all this, so feel free to message me with any more info on these relics or corrections on my understanding of their history.

Ironically there were also wooden lookout towers built during the occupation to look like trees! These are all long gone now of course.

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Water Tower

An ambient ode to Guernsey’s iconic Forest Road concrete water tower.

I think the background field recordings on this give it a similar feel to those on my last album, 7 Nocturnes East. That album was all based on the atmosphere of Guernsey places captured on late night walks.

The process for 7NE was all about single, simple unedited field recordings, but I hadn’t placed any artistic restrictions on the recording process when working on The Towers I: Inaccessible album. So using this new creative freedom I visited the area around the water tower several times to gather the audio material needed. Captured are the sound of running water, unseen machinery, drains, the nearby main road and more, along with added ambient music of course.

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