Richard Skelton - Four Workings (2021)

Four Workings uses cards drawn from a divination deck as cues for a series of musical compositions made with the same restricted palette of sounds. The self-devised deck features word roots in Proto-Indo-European, a hypothetical language of the Late Neolithic. Four Workings therefore continues Skelton’s long-abiding interest in archaeology by formally extending his research into a ritual auditory domain. Each composition is a meditation upon a single, unvoiced question. The album was recorded during lockdown in summer 2020.