Folly

Black Arches with Sexton Ming

‘Folly’

Looming above Hastings on the South Coast of the UK, carved into East Hill, three black shapes are visible from a distance. Mysterious and ominous, they assume the aspect of the entrance to a church or a portal to dimensions unknown. Closer inspection however reveals them to be no more than mere follies carved and painted into the rock, as hoaxster John Coussens sought to convince visitors that an elaborate subterranean kingdom lurked within.

Centuries later, this coastal town remains a place that serves as a magnet to the wyrd and the mischievous. And it’s here that the meeting of minds took place that led to the second release for Rocket’s Black Hole series -an imprint focused on the unorthodox, otherworldly and esoteric. ‘Folly’ is the result of collaboration between the town’s improv-psych heads Black Arches and arch-maverick outsider artist Sexton Ming, and it’s a dive into mystery and magick as perverse and potent as any this seaside landscape has birthed.

The journey that led to ‘Folly’ began in the dingy cellar of a wine bar in the town, where a gang of local aesthetes and bohemians had started a night of experimental performance art, spoken word and music by the name of Weird Shit. With musical inspiration coming from the gathering of freaks present, Black Arches formed initially as a freeform musical outlet for author and musician Gareth E. Rees’ spoken word extrapolations, later incorporating Matt Frost from his garage rock troupe The Dirty Contacts, and frequent collaborator James Weaver, to form a vehicle for wild experimentation and psychic abandon.

Given he was also a regular Weird Shit attendee, it was no surprise when Sexton Ming entered the picture. An uncompromising iconoclast whose creative tentacles have reached into some of the murkiest quarters of the last four decades of the UK underground from the Medway Scene to oblivion, he was soon appearing onstage with the band at a show supporting Gnod in St Leonards. Soon after that a perplexing but serendipitous chain of events took place, with demons conjured up via improvised sessions, poetic licence taken, dystopias chronicled, audio files gone awry, vocals overdubbed and laptops lost, Somehow amidst the sturm-und-drang ‘Folly’ was summoned in all its murky glory.

‘Folly’ may be haunted by its local environs, but its absurdist metier is more broadly also stricken by the effects of late capitalism and ecological collapse. Together, Black Arches and Sexton Ming are as intrepid in dealing with a man driven insane by his local refuse collection system (‘Bin Day’) as they are with the surreal tale of a ‘Salty Sultan’, and as comfortable tackling the horrors of admin as they are chronicling one character who falls in love with an electricity pylon.

Yet for all the bleakness and malevolence of ‘Folly’, there’s wry humour to be found in the wreckage. As we embark on the second quarter of an uncertain century, just maybe this psychic travelogue is a dark prism to make sense of the chaos we confront. Whichever, it remains a spectacle as compelling as that by which Black Arches were named.

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