Doors to the Unexpected: Sharron Kraus Interview

Sharron Kraus talks to Stewart Gardiner about engaging with the present, facilitating shifts of consciousness and a collaboration on Ghost Box this summer

“And there were two kinds, the bright and the dark, and both were very lovely and very wonderful, and some people saw only one kind, and some only the other, but some saw both.”

Arthur Machen, The White People

“When someone says that they don’t believe in Magick, ask them if they believe in Art.”

David Keenan, To Run Wild In It: A Handbook of Autonomic Tarot

The alchemy behind Sharron Kraus’s music was briefly made manifest during the afternoon Ghost Box show I attended at Cafe OTO in October. Or at least I caught a glimpse of it, felt its tendrils snaking through the room. Sharron was suffering from a terrible cold, which impacted on her ability to sing to her full range. That her voice is such a vital part of her music goes without saying, and she was deeply apologetic to the audience before and throughout the set. She needn’t have worried.

Sharron submerged herself in her performance, giving everything she had and more. She was buoyed by the “synth and sympathy” (her words on the day) provided by her band and the audience. Her voice became a ghost at points, haunting the songs in spectral registers. Sudden voiceless passages were enlivened by the band, yet Sharron’s voice somehow maintained a presence nonetheless. I was spellbound.

It wasn’t just about the effort she put in (everyone likes a trier after all) or that people felt sorry for her (she was clearly unwell). What happened was that she put everything she had left in and got something unexpectedly powerful out. I can’t explain it, so I’m going to call it alchemy.

It was a pleasure to speak with Sharron for this Concrete Islands interview.

How did you get involved with folk music? Was it something that had a presence in your childhood?

I only really discovered folk music as a student. There was a great folk session at an Irish pub on the Cowley Rd in Oxford and I’d squeeze into the tiny back room for the late lock-ins. I’d been given a bodhran for Christmas so took that along and played along with jigs and reels, but the real thrill was the songs and the singers whose powerful voices filled the space, everyone joining in with harmonies in a spontaneous choir.

Do the shared cultural pasts implied in folk songs exert a pull on you? Are they then a sort of nostalgia that reaches beyond one’s own life? If so, what gives the songs or the singing of them such a power?

I don’t think that it’s nostalgia or shared cultural pasts that I’m gripped by in folk songs: in general the songs that I’m drawn to are the ones dealing with perennial themes, love, magic and death, etc., and I’m less interested in songs populated with antiquated characters – milkmaids, ploughboys, etc. I think it’s important to connect with the past, but not in a nostalgic way. Nostalgia / romanticising the past seems to be what happens when we fail to fully engage with the present. For me the here and now is just as interesting, mysterious, magical and romantic as the past, so I’m not trying to reach beyond my own life and experience in this kind of way.

How would you describe your approach to folk music? Rob Young places you under the “esoteric folk” banner in Electric Eden – is that as accurate as anything?

My approach to folk music has shifted and changed over time. When I first discovered folk music I would learn traditional songs and tunes and go to sessions and sing and play with others. At the same time I was writing my own songs and starting to perform those, but at different venues – the two things were disconnected and I assumed that the people who went to folk sessions wouldn’t be interested in my own more idiosyncratic songs. When I started to record and get my music out in the world, it got categorised as folk – acid folk or weird folk usually – and that made me rethink what folk music was, recognise that the category extended beyond the traditional material sung and played in folk sessions.

Now the music I make seems to me to have wandered quite far away from traditional folk music and even from its influence, but once people categorise you as a folk musician, you’re always seen as one!

What should someone expect to encounter on a Sharron Kraus record?

There are plenty of differences from one of my records to the next – some are acoustic, others not; some are collections of songs, others are instrumental; some are loose and improvised and others are arranged and tightly structured. Common to all of what I do is a desire to create worlds for the listener to step into, in much the same way that good stories allow you to lose yourself in them.

How do you hope your music makes listeners feel?

I don’t aim to evoke particular emotions, but, related to the above, I do aim to facilitate shifts of consciousness and lead my listeners into worlds that may seem a little eerie or magical.

Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow is steeped in death, yet doesn’t get lost down paths of despair. Renewal isn’t subservient to death here – something which is apparent from the title and cover art, and indeed runs through the album itself. Can you talk about the genesis of the album and how hopeful or otherwise you believe it to be?

I’ve always been interested in how we find joy, magic and meaning In a world that can be bleak, menacing and dark. Rather than sugarcoating things, and pretending everything’s okay, I want to acknowledge the worst, grapple with it and still emerge with my hope and optimism intact. My music has tended to contain a mix of dark and light as a result. Recently things have taken a turn for the bleaker and darker, so it’s seemed more important than ever to focus on the way light can shine in the darkest places and life, and love can triumph over death and hate. I think this comes across in the songs on Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow – I hope so!

How did your Ghost Box Other Voices record came about?

I met Jim and Julian last year at the London launch of Justin Hopper’s book, The Old Weird Albion. Justin and I performed a piece that combined some of his text with a live soundtrack I’d created for it and the Ghost Box guys loved it and expressed an interest in recording it as an album. Jim also asked if I’d like to do a single and I said “yes”!

I’m interested in how an artist invited to guest on Ghost Box approaches it. Is there the sense of trying to tweak your sound to have a more Ghost Box-y feel? Jim Jupp and Julian House pick artists that already fit in, yet add something fresh to their aesthetic, so perhaps there’s a natural process that occurs?

I generally try not to let thoughts about what someone else wants influence the way I make music, partly because that seems likely to interfere with the creative process and partly because often people don’t like what you think they’re going to like and vice versa. Given that Ghost Box have a strong aesthetic, if I’d been asked to create something new for them it might have been hard to avoid being influenced by the Ghost Box “sound”. What actually happened, though, was that I already had “Something Out of Nothing” recorded – it was originally going it to be on Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow but didn’t quite fit on the album. I sent over the finished track to see if Jim and Julian liked it and they did.

Are there any plans to work with Ghost Box again?

Yes, there are – I’m already working with Jim Jupp on the collaboration with Justin Hopper that I mentioned. It’s called Chanctonbury Rings and will hopefully be released summer 2019. Working with Justin and Jim is a lot of fun – they’re both really good communicators and I love the back and forth of collaboration, sending rough mixes over and then talking about what works and what doesn’t.

I discovered that you’ve written a book for younger readers, Hares in the Moonlight, which is described as being in the style of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper. (I’ll certainly be buying a copy to read with my children.) How long have you been writing fiction and where does it fit with your songwriting?

The children’s fiction I like tends to be magical in a low-key, non-supernatural way and the magic is often subtle and psychological rather than dramatic. That’s the kind of magic I think exists in the real world too, so I see the best magical fiction as conveying something true, not just creating fantasy. I love Garner’s The Owl Service and the way there’s something weird happening but it’s never pinned down; the weirdness or magic emanates out of the land and the characters get drawn into the stories contained in it. I’ve wanted to try writing that kind of children’s fiction for a while, only having written short stories before, and really enjoyed writing Hares, so will have to find time to write more.

I think the desire to convey something of the magic we can find in the world is inherent in this kind of fiction writing, my songwriting, and my non-fiction writing.

Are there any books, films or television shows that have had an impact on your music?

I’m sure there are lots, in many different ways. It’s not something it’s at all easy to be specific about, though, as things go into a melting pot and what comes out is, hopefully, something very different – something uniquely mine.

You had an awful cold and had almost lost your voice when I saw you supporting Beautify Junkyards at the Ghost Box matinee at Cafe OTO. It was really inspiring how you fought on despite your concerns – the audience was completely behind you and everyone got totally into the show. How important is playing live to you? (I’m guessing from the evidence that it is very important indeed!)

Spontaneity and allowing things to unfold without forcing them is exciting to me, as are the ways music creates direct connections between people. Each live show is different – you never know what will happen – and I love that. I like to open the door to the unexpected, even if that means some gigs will be a bit ramshackle – better to keep the music alive and fresh than to rehearse it till you’re bored with it and give polished performances every night. I think a good live show opens up a kind of magical space into which performers and audience can enter together and experience something profound.    

Looking at future appearances on your website, one that leaps out at me is the Magickal Women Conference. Can you talk a little about that?

I’ll be giving a presentation on the ways in which ritual or magickal work grounds my creative practices. I’m interested in what happens when we open up ritual or magical spaces and the states of mind we enter into. What seems to happen is that we allow our imagination free reign – like in dreams or psychedelic experience – and this means we encounter unexpected ideas, make new connections and find inspiration.

What have you got coming up next?

First I’ll be finishing recording Chanctonbury Rings, then once that’s done I’ll be back to work on new material together with my band and getting ready for live shows later in the year. As well as performing my own work, and the collaboration with Justin, I’ll be performing together with Canadian composer Martin Arnold, Angharad Davies and the BBC Scottish Orchestra at Tectonics in Glasgow, and as part of a project called Sound of Science, which is a collaboration between musicians and scientists and involves the musicians playing songs about gravity, photosynthesis, etc. and the scientists doing experiments, most of which involve setting things on fire and blowing things up!

I have a book project I’m working on in any down-time I get and I’m aiming to send that out to publishers in the next couple of months. It’s about the kind of low-key magic I’ve been talking about in answer to some of your other questions – the idea that within the natural world and the world of the imagination there is magic, mystery, weirdness and wonder to be experienced, and that experience of those kinds of things is life-enhancing. I’ve been writing papers and presentations for conferences on music, folklore, place, etc. over the last few years and started to notice that this was the main theme running through all of them, so decided to draw them all together. It’s an exciting project.

Alan Garner or Arthur Machen?

If forced to choose, it would have to be Alan Garner, but Machen’s The White People is one of the eeriest stories I’ve ever read!

sharronkraus.com