ANCESTRAL REVERB: MADE WITH COAL DUST

A world’s first? A new vinyl album, limited to just 100 copies, entitled Ancestral Reverb, has been created, embedded with coal dust

Launched at a renewable energy transition conference at the Pitman’s Parliament in Durham, the album features Newcastle folk singer, Richard Dawson, speaking the words of former miners and their families. It’s a long poem, in other words, assembled from recordings of interviews with mining families and set to a suite of electronica, using colliery music spanning over 100 years, produced by the climate hope organisation, Threads in the Ground.

Coal from Blackhall colliery beach was smashed. The dust was then embedded into the transparent records. The coal has also been used to ‘carbon print’ documentary photos of the project. 

The project features an array of northern talent. The spoken word piece on the track was curated by the poet Jacob Polley, consisting of interviews with some of the last living deep coal miners in the North East, alongside their children and grandchildren, discussing coal mining heritage and climate change.

The project was also documented by  North East photographers, Andy Martin and Rachel Deakin.

Copies will be held in the archives of Redhills, The National Coal Mining Museum and the British Library, as well as a copy being held by each of the families interviewed for the project.

Threads in the Ground: www.threadsintheground.com

Buy here: threadsintheground.bandcamp.com