Set two decades after where S.T.A.R.V.E. left off, Houses is a temporally linear day-in-the-life narrative, presented as a series of musical vignettes. The narrative focuses on a fictional working-class early-middle-aged father of two in contemporary Nottingham, England, as he struggles to come to terms with the societal restrictions, conformities, and benefits of fatherhood.
The piece is set to music that builds on forms of intergenerational dialogue between the character and his late father, drawing heavily on James Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey to provide thematic and conceptual contexts (as detailed in the relevant track introductions and gloss notes below). Framing itself around these texts, Houses simultaneously links with other works in multiple genres, from high modernism to popular music and culture, in accordance with traditional definitions of the ‘encyclopedic narrative’, to imply the multiplicity of the protagonist’s struggles, and his connections to the world beyond him. The album also provides a running, subjective commentary on the state of contemporary British society, and focuses upon multiple themes including those of the paternal bond, masculinity, mortality, sexual desire, race and class, and fatherhood. Out now on Plague.
Purchase Cassette: Cappo – Houses
Joyful Union Cassette Resource 