Album Review: Kill Shelter & Antipole - A Haunted Place (2021)

A Haunted Place is a new collaborative album made by Edinburgh-based Pete Burns (Kill Shelter) and Trondheim-based Karl Morten Dahl (Antipole). It’s a partnership that feels like the most natural thing in the world. It’s also not an entirely new development, with Dahl having contributed to the Kill Shelter debut (Damage) of a few years back, and Burns having previously added deft remixing touches to Antipole’s past work. I think I’m also correct in saying that the pair were former labelmates on the Unknown Pleasures platform. But A Haunted Place, released on the Manic Depression label, is the first occasion that Burns and Dahl have put their names to the same full-length album.

It’s a blending of dark post-punk talent that complements each man’s skills perfectly. Burns really does have a terrific “goth” voice, the sort that immediately conjures up recall of some of the genre’s finest exponents of yester-year … the likes of Murphy, and Eldritch, to name only the most obvious of touchstones. The sort of vocal that undoubtedly adds an extra layer of drama and heft to proceedings. That’s without even starting on his abilities as a multi-instrumentalist, his generally excellent word-smithery, and crystalline production skills.

Dahl’s powers have been well documented on this site in the past. Antipole’s work will need no introduction to any regular everythingsgonegreen reader. If there is such a thing. I’ve fanboy-ed so often on this blog it almost feels embarrassing to wax any further about his melodic, always evocative, and frequently mesmerising guitar work. Suffice to say his instantly identifiable use of space remains a stand-out feature on A Haunted Place, and the manner in which his own fretwork blends so beautifully with that of Burns is key to making the collaboration so effective.

So it is an album that fair drips with a dark dense atmosphere, from the banging club-geared opener ‘Raise The Skies’, right through to the more mild paced album closer, ‘Every Waking Hour’, it’s a journey into a deep fog of nocturnal wanderings (and back). The sort of trip that might be traversed through the chilly or misty narrow cobblestoned lanes of old Edinburgh town in the middle of a winter’s night. With an all-consuming sense of drama. A prevailing angst proving impossible to shake due to the uncertainty of what might be lurking under that streetlamp off in the murky distance. A picturesque dream that hasn’t quite yet morphed into a fully-fledged nightmare.

Your blogger may have even experienced such, in a past life. I know that exact spot in Auld Reekie. Devastatingly beautiful by day, unnerving and foreboding by night. Sadly, I have no personal experience of Trondheim, but I imagine it wouldn’t be too dissimilar to Edinburgh … and maybe, just maybe, that is exactly where and how this album was born? Different cities, but shared experiences, past lives, and haunted places.

P.S. Don’t look behind you.

Bandcamp link here.