This latest collaboration between violinist and songwriter Matt Howden and his poet and artist father Keith – their third – is an extraordinary achievement: in its sonic ambition, its storytelling, its joy in language, its historical reach. A concept album, for sure: but precise, brisk, intricate and forthright.

‘Language for Stone’ began as a record label project. Archeological Records intends this to be the first in a series of releases investigating musical stones: a kind of audio-survey, it seems, of naturally-found sounds. Projects ranging further afield (to Europe and the Far East) are in train. But for now, the focus is on Cumbria, UK – and in particular the 18th-century explorer and inventor Peter Crosthwaite, who fashioned a modern lithophone (think xylophone but with stones instead of wood) after discovering musical stones in Keswick and Skiddaw.

It is hard to imagine a duo more suited to this assignment. Keith provides and reads the text for the suite, his poetry so firmly rooted in land and landscape.

Matt – who writes and performs most of his song-based material under the name Sieben (read more here) – has trod a restless path through dark folk, neo-classical, punk, soundtracks and all points in between. Composing here, he accesses that pulse of pastoral energy that informs some of his classic albums, raw, alive with an evolving tension, ritualistic without ever romanticising or rose-tinting the source.

There are a number of reasons why ‘Language for Stone’ is an especially satisfying record. To begin with, it sounds incredible. Matt blends his signature violin/electronics with samples of the stones, with seamless results, creating a whole new layer of percussive melody that punctuates the more familiar swirl of the strings. Yet there’s still a space, an echo in the production that resonates either into the earth, or upwards, evoking a limitless sky.

Keith’s voice is a gift to his verse, his accent and authority unmistakeable and irreplaceable. If you wanted the earth to declare itself, you couldn’t ask for a finer mouthpiece. The (near) title track, ‘A Language for Stones’, making poetry out of technique itself, reads almost as a manifesto for the record’s lyrical approach, and Keith literally has the measure of his work’s richness in rhetoric and rhythm. 

The arrangements reflect this understanding that the words have a powerful musicality in themselves, often seeming to lead the musical accompaniment (rather than the two strands simply existing in a kind of sympathy). The haunting ‘Eolith’ is perhaps the most striking example of this, where Matt’s music chimes and tolls behind Keith’s alliterative, ceaselessly inventive phrases.

Elsewhere, some lines lodge in one’s head like fixed points: what more succinct summary of the album’s aim to evoke pre- or supernatural music from nature than ‘Before speech were the oratorios of magma, the sun’s hymn, the moon’s choreography’? The pendulum swings both ways, however, as Matt deploys both their voices as instruments – take the looped breaths and echoing repeated mantra of ‘Woodwo’.

As a work of sonic inventiveness, bringing together the best elements of spoken word and sound art, the album is a complete success. But it’s worth spending a little time on what makes it such an emotionally rewarding listen as well.

The father/son dynamic surely plays a part. The subject matter stretches back to prehistory, of course, time periods tracked in layers of rock. But the artists span neighbouring generations. Matt’s interest in, and facility for, the potential of language in his own work (from the expansive flower-vocabulary of early masterpiece ‘Sex and Wildflowers’, honed to the razor-sharp, compressed anger of last year’s blistering ‘Brand New Dark Age’) is a clear connection between the two, and it’s little wonder they are so effective as a team. It’s a remarkable artistic bond, totally free of cliché and sentimentality, more with a twin emotional intelligence.

I also believe that Matt’s longtime fans (myself included) will feel particularly drawn to this album, as it also reaches back into his own, earlier sounds. Signature touches – breaths, bass, beats – inevitably reflect recent work (and equipment), but ‘Innate Symphonies of the Land’, the monumental piece forming almost the backbone of the suite, somehow folds these into myriad other Sieben ‘eras’. The only track sung by Matt, it features chanting that could be inspired by the inimitable ‘Ogham Inside the Night’ album, and grinds with the churning, stately expansiveness of ‘The Old Magic’. As expected, however, nostalgia is absent, the past instead providing a springboard for the present. At nine minutes, it lasts for a quarter of the album’s running time, and you still don’t want it to end.

A clear contender for my album of the year and certainly one of the most original: if you want to understand what’s brilliant about both these men, this is an ideal place to start. A spellcasting listen.

AA

Buy ‘Language for Stone’ on CD (while stocks last!) directly from the Sieben online shop.

The album is also available digitally from the record label on Bandcamp.