A Closer Listen
The house is flooded, the power is out and a baby is due any moment … this is the real-life story of the final Wist Records release, as dramatic as the tale behind The Country Hospital. Founded in 2009 by Gary Mentanko (Depatterning), the label has been responsible for some of the some of the scene’s most memorable releases (Being’s Folkestone Lighthouse, the 7-disc The Unofficial Countryside) and distinctive packaging (the current jackdaw series and the well-loved Book Report Series, which pairs Penguin Mini Modern Classics with original music). Sadly, after 15 years the imprint is wrapping up its run, leaving us feeling, well, a little bit wistful.
Save for the occasional reissue and older people’s record collections, the current generation will glimpse only a hint of what was once a joyful and mysterious tradition: opening physical releases to discover copious liner notes and intriguing ephemera. Opening The Country Hospital, one finds a healthy supply of mysterious photographs, a bonus CD3″ and the story of the Weyburn Mental Hospital, located not far from where Mentanko grew up. The facility was founded on a philosophy of patient and therapist working together to cure mental illness, sharing LSD as a tool. Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley each stopped by, to no one’s surprise. The album, recorded as a joint venture with Delphine Dora, is based on the writings of Weyburn patient and nurse Kay Parley, who is still alive at the age of 100, although it’s not mentioned if she still takes hallucinogens.
The music is suitably spooky, reminiscent of The Caretaker’s haunted ballroom, overlaid with interviews and reminiscences. A very friendly monologue unspools in “Things Look Sharper and Brighter,” but concludes, “it’s time to go back for lunch,” which seems in context a bit ominous. The therapists do seem to care about their patients, but conditions such as schizophrenia simply cannot be cured, as evidenced by some of the more disjointed interviews. “Treatment (Electropulses)” is a reflection of one of the more controversial approaches, concluding with a bittersweet rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.” In contrast, the sing-song of “The Patient” brings self-imposed order to seeming chaos, a hospital monitor and a music box beeping and chiming in the background.
“Unless you have experienced deep psychotic depression, I doubt that I can find the words to make you understand,” intones the narrator of “It’s Like Being in a Tunnel.” Her flat affect is harrowing. The treatment can be as bad as the condition. When the track devolves into whispers and echoes, the listener feels the disorientation. Why not try LSD? One’s daily experience could already seem like a hallucination. One imagines the halls of the shuttered hospital inhabited by ghosts, but the ghosts were already there when the facility was full. In “Psychosis/Slumber,” they bleed through the music, begging to be heard. The bonus disc includes a single 17-minute piece, a swath of pure experimentalism, with abstract murmurings, electronic meanderings, and the voice of Delphine Dora holding it all together.
While Wist Records too is closing, its own echoes will live on through digital media and cherished physical artifacts. The house will drain, the power will return, the baby will arrive and the discs will be sent out. A new chapter will begin for Mentanko and the extended Wist Records family. We’re grateful for the last fifteen years, for the music and the memories, and for the mark that Wist Records has made upon the industry. (Richard Allen)
Available here
Tue Oct 31 00:01:02 GMT 2023