CHIMEHOURS - Underneath The Earth

The debut from British duo Chimehours, made up of Beck Goldsmith and Jon Dix, turns folk music into a spectre. "Underneath The Earth", inspired by Max Porter's horror novel "Lanny", doesn't use folk as a means of returning to tradition, but as a tool for renewal: living matter to be shaped into a gothic fable, set in an isolated village deep in the woods, just as in the novel that inspired it.

Strings intertwine with traditional folk instruments – acoustic guitars and woodwinds – broadening the scope of the songwriting and opening onto cinematic, orchestral vistas: "Underneath The Earth" works, in every sense, as the soundtrack to a book. It's a brilliant idea, developed with great attention to detail, thanks to ambient textures that stretch out the narrative tension and to Beck Goldsmith's ethereal, fragile and magnetic vocals, which recall the most refined acoustic ballads of Marissa Nadler.

The title track represents the perfect balance between these elements, distilling the project's pagan-folk-horror aesthetic (the band describe themselves as hauntological folk). The percussion, when it comes into play (particularly on "Toothwort Took Him" and "Run"), heightens a tribal dimension reminiscent of Wardruna, though without any ethno-musicological intent: Chimehours always stay within a fairy-tale, gothic imagination, both narrative and ritual.

One of the album's most solemn moments is "Look For Me", a track that brings the duo close to Dead Can Dance and their sense of ethnic music filtered through a dark and sacral sensibility. Thirty-six minutes that smell of woods, darkness and solitude: a nature that offers no consolation, but amplifies fears, turning into a symbolic and mental space. A folk music that re-emerges from the earth in search of new life. A mature, coherent and deeply evocative debut: a band well worth betting on.

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13/01/2026