Darren Hayman is back, with a second volume of songs resulting from his Thankful Villages project. The first village is Cundall, Yorkshire.

Cundall, Yorkshire – Thankful Villages #19 from Darren Hayman on Vimeo. (Photos by Emma Winston.)

The sun is already low as we approach Cundall, but that’s ok – we’re staying over. Sleeping overnight in a Thankful Village is a special treat, as so few have guest houses. We are staying on a farm. Me and Emma are given tea in the living room and clearly thought of as couple. That’s ok, we only need the double bed to lay out our synthesisers and make them hum whilst the village sleeps.

Emma catches the last of the sunlight on her Diana camera, judging the exposure with her finger on a small plastic lever. It’s as random and fault laden as any other part of the Thankful Villages project and luck has stayed with us so far. We double expose. We shoot ourselves in domed safety mirrors.

We eat in a pub in the next village and continue to not correct people who assume we are a couple. It’s a pointless and rubbish deception. We go to our room and decorate the divan with keyboards and patch leads. We wear headphones and no one knows the noise we make.

We make the oscillators sound like trees and leaves and incongruous new builds. We make music by accident, just like the accident of us even being here.

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Thankful Villages Volume 2 will be released on Rivertones on 26 May. Preorder a copy here.

Darren plays a special release day gig at London’s Horse Hospital, with support from Luke Turner, Spaceship Mark, and DJ Frances Castle. Tickets are available here.

Previous Thankful Villages posts on Caught by the River/Darren Hayman on Twitter