Pefkin

Pefkin is the alter ego of Gayle Brogan, Ayrshire-based creator of slowly-unfolding, ritualistic hymnals that draw heavily on the landscape and natural world. Pefkin emerged after the retro-futuristic psych/electronic duo Electroscope went into diapause in 2000. Influenced by Nico, Hood, Movietone and Syd Barrett, she created a fragmentary, more stripped-down version of Electroscope's bedroom psychedelia. Her sound comprises a mesmerising and enigmatic layering of vocals, violin, analogue synth, zither, psaltery, harp, guitar, found objects and field recordings. She records at home in North Ayrshire with contributions from regular collaborators John Cavanagh (Phosphene) and Alan Davidson (Kitchen Cynics). Gayle's third LP on Morc truly brings together everything we like so much about her work: a mesmerising and enigmatic layering of vocals, violin, analogue synth, zither, psaltery, harp, guitar, found objects and field recordings, all blending together into slowly-unfolding, ritualistic hymnals that draw heavily on the landscape and natural world. In 2018 Gayle was asked to play at the Oy Festival on Papa Westray with a brief linking islanders to space exploration. These 5 tracks are the result. The opener and title track describes a past method of navigation across the seas using a sextant to read the stars and plot a course. It features Gayle's fellow Celestial Navigator from Electroscope on VCS3 and Revox A77 tape recorder - John Cavanagh. The other 4 songs are loosely focused on Arctic exploration, in particular the Orkney-born explorer John Rae who discovered the fate of Lord Franklin and inadvertently the North West Passage. Alan Davidson of the Kitchen Cynics plays some magnificent psych guitar on 'I Am John Rae'. It wouldn't be a Pefkin album without birds, and 'Tulungusaq', a dreamy slice of psych pop, is based on an Inuit creation myth about the crow. Finally, both sides close out located firmly in frozen far north. 'Numenius Borealis' is the scientific name for Eskimo Curlew which made the Arctic tu...