Sharron Kraus talks to Gareth Thompson about her Preternatural Investigations podcast and finding ways into a place’s magic and mystery
Preternatural Investigations is a weekly podcast series, presented by the explorative musician Sharron Kraus. Across twelve episodes, Kraus delves into those ‘marvellous things that lie between the mundane and the miraculous’. Her topics include The Magic of Place, Fictional Magic, Old Traditions and New, Art as Alchemy, The Quality of Wildness.
Each episode runs for about half an hour, with Kraus’s own music throbbing darkly in the background. As her hypnotic voice steals over us, the experience becomes soothing yet marrow-chilling and full of psychic vibrations.
At university, Kraus studied maths and philosophy to degree level, whilst cramming occult and mythological texts. Her numerous recordings draw on folk traditions, psychedelia, the gothic arts and earthly magick. In 2019 she released the acclaimed Chanctonbury Rings album with American writer Justin Hopper, on Ghost Box Records. Kraus lives in Sheffield, but is a frequent visitor to her beloved Wales.
The basis for these podcasts was originally a book project. Are you still planning a print version?
Planning is too strong a word! I’ve been writing the essays that form Preternatural Investigations for a while. During lockdown I planned to work up a book draft, but the idea of a podcast project took over. This appealed as being more immediate – not having to wait ages to hook a publisher and get slotted in their schedule. Once I began recording and added music to the words, podcasting seemed like the natural medium.
Did the soundtrack idea stem from your work on Chanctonbury Rings?
Not at all. I’ve been keen on soundtracking for years and composing music as a response to something – a place, someone’s words, a story. That’s why I was drawn to working with Justin on Chanctonbury Rings. Creating music in response to his amazing narrative was right up my street.
How much of the podcast music is drawn from existent recordings?
I’ve used previously released music if it seems appropriate, delving into my archives for things to rework and repurpose. But an episode I’m working on now requires a new piece to weave in and out of some field recordings. I’m a bit worried about my recording schedule if I need to create much new music, as I want to keep up the weekly episodes.
Do you agree with Justin Hopper that faith in the preternatural is a form of rebellion?
There’s a growing recognition that (in David Southwell’s words) ‘re-enchantment is resistance’. There’s many of aspects of this. The values enshrined in a magical or enchanted worldview are at odds with capitalism and consumerism. That’s something Patrick Curry writes well about. The fruits of engagement with what I call the preternatural are deeper and more meaningful connections with each other, with nature and creativity. Such connections can make our lives richer and fuller, with less need to spend lots of money on stuff.
Aren’t heightened experiences in nature just projected by our imaginations?
The heightened experiences I’m interested in have a direction of flow from the place to us. In projection, the direction of flow is the opposite – we project our fantasies, desires and needs onto the world, making us less able to see what’s really there.
A landscape becomes symbolic due to personal associations, or due to the myths and stories attached to it. These things enable us to find ways into a place’s magic and mystery. We can also experience places as magical without feeling at home in them. The dark magic in places we feel to be evil – like Auschwitz – is the opposite of feeling at home.
Freud said that ‘uncanny’ means a sense of the unfamiliar within the familiar. Has that concept inspired you musically?
Not consciously, but I gravitate towards sounds that are more warped or discordant. I like combining things that don’t normally go together. It’s good to find new ways of seeing familiar things, to shake up preconceptions and find strangeness within the ordinary. That’s part of what enables us to find the kind of magic I’m interested in. Or, indeed, to see the magic in things we take for granted.
You often refer to fiction writers in the series. How do they merge the natural and preternatural worlds?
As I characterise it, the preternatural world is contained within the natural world, so there’s no merging needed. The writers I draw on depict types of magic that have analogues in the real world and whose fiction enables us to view the world as magical. I’m also interested in how we create fictional worlds that take on a kind of reality.
The podcasts look at music’s role in evoking the ineffable. Is this what we’ve come to know as folk-horror?
Music being capable of evoking the ineffable by far predates folk-horror. I’d guess it’s an idea to be found in most cultures throughout time. It dates back at least as far as Greek mythology and the Orpheus myth. It also appears in the Birds of Rhiannon in Welsh mythology – those magical birds whose song is sweeter than that of mortal birds and which signals the opening of a portal.
Where would you take a preternatural cynic to try and enlighten them?
I have a friend who’s cynical about men and doesn’t believe in love. She’s had bad experiences in relationships and wears her cynicism like a shield, preventing anyone from getting through. When someone is set on disbelieving something, it’s hard to get past that. In the same way there’s people who are cynical about the magic I’m talking about, who wouldn’t experience anything unusual in the places I find to be mysterious and inspiring.
Cynicism about love tells us not to have unrealistic and overly-romantic expectations. And love, like magic, is often subtle or low-key. If you romanticise it, expecting something melodramatic, you’ll be disappointed. Just as love at first sight is not the norm, we shouldn’t expect to visit a place and be immediately bowled over by its magic. Falling in love with someone involves getting to know them and letting a relationship develop. Our magical experience of place unfolds in the same way.
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