A New Land: Ann Margaret Hogan’s ‘Funeral Cargo’
The kind of music made depends on the mind making it, that much is true. But I also think it matters where the music is made too. While the sounds made North-East of the River Mersey were influenced by their surroundings in many of the bands emerging from Liverpool in the 1960’s, so the surroundings South-West of the Mersey play a huge role in this album by Ann Margaret Hogan. It’s called ‘Funeral Cargo’.
Image Credit: Gerry McNee.
Songwriter, pianist, arranger and producer Anni Hogan’s name can be seen in the credits of Marc Almond’s work outside of Soft Cell, beginning with his Marc and the Mambas records, and later his solo albums in the 1980’s. Originally a DJ and gig promoter in Leeds, Hogan has collaborated with many beyond her work with Almond, including Yello and Nick Cave as well as touring with Paul Weller. Her recent ‘Lost In Blue’ album (released in 2019) features Lydia Lunch, Richard Strange, and Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flür and was co-produced by Soft Cell’s Dave Ball.
Under the name Ann Margaret Hogan, she released her album ‘Honeysuckle Burials’ in March 2020. Recorded at her own Studio Blue and utilising field recordings taken while journeying through North Wales, Ann’s latest album takes it’s lead from Honeysuckle Burials, though this one pays attention not just to the surroundings, but their history too…
The very name ‘Forgotten Prelude’ alludes to the kind of past Ann Margaret Hogan wishes to raise with Funeral Cargo. As a nation, Britain is very aware of it’s more recent past, but what about a civilisation much further back in history? Hogan focuses on a time when the Vikings crossed the Irish Sea to settle on the Wirral Coast in 902 AD. This first piece on the album might very well be at home backed by a tight jazz band, in another life. But like all the pieces on Funeral Cargo, this is performed solo by Hogan at Studio Blue, bringing an intimacy that puts you in the room.
Sandwiched between the River Mersey to the North-East and the River Dee to the South-West, the land jutting out between these waters is where Anni Hogan calls home, on the North-East tip in Wallasey. Her walks in the surrounding areas are both the inspiration to Funeral Cargo, and like Honeysuckle Burials, are also a part of the recording, as Hogan took field recordings during these walks.
The piano parts were played on her Kawai baby grand, as pictured in the accompanying photographs. ‘Fragile Elements’ is driven by the thick bassier chords of the left hand, and part of the intimacy is hearing Ann ease on and off the sustain pedal, a detail any additional instrumentation would erase.
Blink and you’d miss it, a tiny bellow of a foghorn recorded from across the Mersey on a gloomy day, the air thick with the mirk of fog across the water. There’s something about the sequence of notes in the album’s title track that paints an eerie picture, like a warning siren in the distance. Not before the track reaches its halfway point does the piano sound less like a piano, and more like Ann Margaret is striking the piano strings herself, foregoing the use of the keys and expanding the scope of the instrument. In a march that stalks ever closer, the name ‘Funeral Cargo’ can only really mean one thing, can’t it?
The very beginning of ‘Returns Part 1’ has the trebly tone of the strings being plucked directly, before Ann takes a seat and plays the warmest piece on Funeral Cargo so far. Here, Hogan’s playing is smooth, like something that morning made her smile, making it no surprise at all that the pieces on this album are mostly improvised.
As well as exploring the history of the Wirral, Ann also appreciates the flora and fauna, particularly the birdlife in the more natural areas. Indeed, the more gaunt and stalking chord progressions represented in the tracks preceding this one are absent here, a reminder of how nature would do just fine without human intervention.
Ann Margaret Hogan takes a break from walks on The Wirral and instead dedicates a composition to her friend and previous collaborator Wolfgang Flür. Appearing on some of Kraftwerk’s most significant albums in the 1970’s including the much acclaimed ‘Autobahn’ and ‘The Man-Machine’, it’s this classic line-up of the band that was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021. Though Flür left Kraftwerk in the 1980’s, his career in music continued with his debut solo album ‘Eloquence’ in 2015, and his follow-up ‘Magazine’ coming soon.
Birdsong can be heard in Hogan’s field recordings on ‘Impromptu’. Further inland on The Wirral is Thurstaston, where the legend of Thor’s Stone can be found. Surrounded by trees, the huge red sandstone looks somewhat out of place, and the nearby Thurstaston Common is also the highest point of The Wirral, with inspiring views heading out to sea. Ann’s local Wallasey also has a similar mound of rock called the Clynsse stone, at the Wallasey Breck. Norse words can be found all over, with ‘Breck’ taken from the word ‘brekka’, meaning ‘slope on a hillside’.
‘Mesto’ is one of the shorter pieces on Ann Margaret Hogan’s Funeral Cargo, and it follows the darker tones laid out by Fragile Elements and the title track. To the East of Thurstaston is Thingwall, which was the site of a Viking parliament, and possibly the oldest in British history. On the coast to the North is Meols, a Viking sea port, where in the 1930’s, a Viking ship was discovered buried in the ground, but was covered back up by workers rebuilding a pub that was situated on the site. This is where it still remains, with ground penetrating radar confirming the find in the new millennium.
Funeral Cargo’s closing piece is ‘Returns Part 2’, a more active and melodic composition than the previous Mesto. It’s not difficult to see the connection with Part 1 as it references more of the major chordal play as featured in that piece. The similar placement of finishing each side of vinyl is no accident, leaving the needle drifting to the outer groove in peace, free of the heavier musings on Funeral Cargo. It’s a rare thing for an album of forty minutes to transport you both to a time I’ve never known, and a location I’ve never been. An extraordinary journey and a lesson that it is possible to escape the fast-paced world we seem to cling on to.
Read on for our Q&A with Ann Margaret Hogan where she discusses the inspirations for the recordings on Funeral Cargo, the circumstances created by the first UK lockdown, Wolfgang Flür and the possibility of live performances.
Image Credit: Gerry McNee.
1. Your new album 'Funeral Cargo' is largely improvisational, what was the first piece you recorded and when did you know you'd make a complete album in this style?
Wolfswalzer was recorded first, pre-lockdown, inspired and composed after travelling back from a gig and an overnight stay in Leeds, it was in fact the last piece inserted into my album puzzle.
Impromptu was the first piece I knew instinctively was destined for a new album. I committed to every sunrise and sunset from the onset of lockdown and I felt it was important to motivate myself musically in the new strange circumstances we all found ourselves in back in early 2020.
From day one, first light induced an internal musical clock timed to or with nature, a sort of early album muse prompting my proactive stance in the studio. Impromptu was written very early in the morning after an even earlier walk, 5 minutes down to the front, vista enriched with a beautiful sunrise over the river Mersey and traipsing through my local shipless docks now harbouring nature in wilder ways. I recorded birdsong and all the waterfront happenings and that was an easy pallet to perceive any initial sonic responses. I felt good on the piano, in the studio and in myself, headphones fed with my morning field recordings, I was fully immersed in my own world and I knew from that first piece an album concept was brewing. Impromptu came out almost fully fledged, insisting on its own existence, the album cut a similar vein.
2. Were there more pieces recorded that were left off the record?
Yes, once I was charged, the light poured out of me and the darkness too, sometimes the light into the darkness, full moon blazing, or the darkness crept into an otherwise sunlit morning, garden birds singing but my artistic heart only finding blue light. Once I opened up in lockdown I couldn’t stop and I wrote and recorded most days during Spring and in fact that’s why I always think of any album as a puzzle, just the right pieces fit. All my extracurricular compositions live in my Studio Blue until they find a home.
3. 'Funeral Cargo' is steeped in the history of the Wirral Coast, do you have a single favourite part of that history that inspires you?
I love that the Wirral has a particular Viking aspect to its history and is the only region in the country with documented evidence of Norwegian Viking settlers, who came here via Ireland, these Norse-Irish have affected so much of our Coastal story. I can walk down my local river promenade to what was once an old Viking sea port, Meols original Norse name ‘Meir Sandbank’, many towns and villages have names derived from their Viking origins and these origins boast a Viking population with its own language customs and parliament all on the Wirral from around 902AD. In fact the title track Funeral Cargo is infused with these tales. After recording late night fog horns on the foggiest flooded midnights on my local docks, I imagined empty Viking ships, ghosts on the empty shoreline, stone ship burials or blazing vessels of death and glory. I even made my own tiny Viking ship with rigging and a little wooden body on board covered in small pebbles collected from ‘Meir Sandbank’.
4. 'Wolfswalzer' is inspired by Kraftwerk's Wolfgang Flür. What's your dearest memory of working with Wolfgang?
When Wolfgang came and stayed in my Studio Blue a few years back, we visited Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ art installation on Crosby beach near Liverpool, and we took photos there together with Gormley’s otherworldly Iron Men sculptures. It was a beautiful sunny windy day and the setting was perfect for celebrating our new track Golden Light. The ex-Kraftwerk ‘Robot’ and myself posed with the supposed extraterrestrials as we imagined them, a far-out cosmic experience as the sunset burnt the sky orange, 100 Iron Men gradually disappeared into the tidal swathes, it was something to behold and a memory treasured forever.
5. You've worked with many different artists across your career. Who is someone you'd like to work with that you haven't before?
I am continually inspired by Diamanda Galas and Ryuichi Sakamoto and sometimes imagine three grand pianos set up in a mighty external space, and we three come together for something meaningful and awe inspiring … all in my head but maybe if I imagine hard enough, I can dream reality.
6. A. Burnham's artwork for the album is curious, what does that image depict?
I don’t know what the artist originally intended, but for me it rears life and death circling, a blazing earth cracked and scratched, fires and funerals, the beginning is the end is the beginning or even another Universe entirely.
7. If you could make a music video for one of the pieces, what kind of imagery would you use? Would it be in the areas surrounding Studio Blue?
It’s a half hour walk from Studio Blue to two of my favourite haunted Hills and album musings and I’d like to film up on both. Flaybrick Hill, a stunning vast old cemetery, now also home to local wildlife conservation, lies next to Bidston Hill, 100 acres of gorse and heathered heath enthralled with ancient Viking myths and legends including visible Norse rock carvings. Both are situated behind the village. I’m from Oxton, also of Norse-Irish descent, originally Oxa-tún, literally an Oxen enclosure. The film should be something dreamlike or surreal conjured from elements exposed and images invoked, treading the rocks and overgrown gravestones. I would maybe place a grand piano amidst the fallen angels resting on forgotten graves, or carve notes into an ancient rock on Bidston Hill or maybe the piano and notes receding into nature, sinking back into the earth, grave subsidence.
8. Would you consider playing the pieces of 'Funeral Cargo' live? Or is their improvisational nature better experienced in their recorded versions?
I would certainly consider performing Funeral Cargo in some form, I know the pieces to a certain degree of course and I would then probably improvise a little around the initial ideas most likely, but they would be recognisable as the compositions on the album. They will naturally sound better in their intended original crafted and mastered recorded versions. The live experience is a different beast but can still be a beautiful crafted being, but it’s a very difficult task to ‘sound’ as good sonically frequency wise. If I have a grand or baby grand piano and a wonderful acoustics space to play in then maybe a live rendition can be achieved to some sonic, aesthetic and performance satisfaction. However, I can cut my cloth when I must :)
9. This album is somewhat of a continuation of 'Honeysuckle Burials' - could this work be a trilogy?
It could, but I think probably not. The sisters feel complete in their Gemini compact, although I'm a ‘Never say never again’ kind of Bond.
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Purchase ‘Funeral Cargo’ by Ann Margaret Hogan and other more recent works via her Bandcamp page.
Purchase signed editions of Anni Hogan’s albums via Lexer Music.
For lossless downloads, cassettes and vinyl, visit Boomkat.
For more information about Anni Hogan, visit her official website.
Follow Anni Hogan on Facebook @annihoganofficial, Instagram @annihogan61 and Twitter @anni61hogan.
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