Otherworldly cartoon-strip radiophonica
Who they?
York-based artist, illustrator and musician Adam Higton, whose delightful work documents, through collage, comic strips, textiles and music, the daily goings-on in a mythical suburb he calls the Cosmic Neighbourhood. It’s a place, he says, where “trees talk and leaves dance”. This is going to be good, right?
Why Cosmic Neighbourhood?
Building on ‘Library Vol 1’, his Workshop-like collection from last year, Higton created a series of tree collages and has provided otherworldly doodlings of the musical kind for each one on his new EP, ‘The Trees’. The opener ‘Touch Of The Sky’ has the whooosh of a woodfolk Hawkwind, urgent synths burble on ‘Fir Hat’, ‘Swaying’ does exactly that, while ‘Power To The Leaves’ rustles warmly under foot. It’s charming stuff.
Tell us more…
There’s a Charles M Schulz feel to his artwork, which you can’t help but connect with. But where Charlie Brown and pals were soundtracked by jazz, Higton’s world is pure psychedelic hauntology. He’s visited the Cosmic Neighbourhood musically before, too, with 2016’s ‘Collages II’ album, a warped ‘Camberwick Green’ of a record that rummages in the hedgerows behind Windy Miller’s gaff. As Higton’s people say, all this will “take you on a mad trip, without the need for actual drugs”. Rather thoughtfully, the release is lined up to coincide with National Tree Week which runs from 27 November until 5 December.
‘The Trees’ EP will be released by Caught By The River on 3 December
