"Love Comes" and "Love Goes"
The haunted opening and closing tracks of Haunted Woodland Volume 5 by Karen Vogt and featuring Hamish Mackintosh
“Isn’t it fascinating how thoughts that are more melancholic tend to linger? Things we don’t want to let go of will ultimately stay to haunt us.”
Karen Vogt
With Haunted Woodland Volume 5 multi-talented Australian artist Karen Vogt invites listeners to imagine themselves among six trees along the Marne River in Paris where she lives and works. The trees compose a space that seems suspicious and spooky, but also comforting and supportive.
Known for her ethereal vocals as a solo artist and co-founder of Heligoland, Karen also utilised guitar, effects pedals, some bass and field recordings made near the six aforementioned trees for the six tracks that make up Haunted Woodland Volume 5. Scottish musician Hamish Mackintosh (FUEL / The Wave Room) provides vocals.
“Some pieces were recorded a few years ago, and they stayed with me - haunted me,” notes Karen. “Other pieces (the opening and closing tracks) were newer, improvised guitar-based drones I made specifically for vocals that I had asked Scottish musician Hamish Mackintosh to record for me.”
For me as a listener, the chilling beauty of opening and closing tracks, “Loves Comes” and “Love Goes” speak to this question of why melancholic thoughts linger with us. Karen’s guitar drones on opening track “Love Comes” instantly open a portal that gently leads you to the melancholic, yet accepting words of Hamish Mackintosh. The closing refrain “love comes, love goes” reaffirms the inevitable return of emotions that will haunt us.
“He sent me these beautiful freeform spoken and sung pieces, without knowing what I would do with them,” explained Karen. “I created a drone around the spoken pieces and wove the sung parts into another track, adding my vocals to it.”
Shining the light on Karen’s talents, Hamish prizes her gifts for kindness, encouragement and creative alchemy, “I love how Karen works and how she embraces collaboration wherever and whenever she wants,” he has said.
Hamish’s melancholy returns to haunt us in closing tune “Love Goes,” except that he has vanished and we are left with only the memory of his words, now permanently embossed within Karen’s haunted guitar drones. The return is suspicious and spooky, but also comforting, just like Karen’s six trees along the river.
Haunted Woodland Volume Five was released 1 May 2025 by Wayside & Woodland Recordings as a super-limited CD and booklet. The CD also includes three remixes. Label co-founder Ben Holton mastered the volume. There are still a few copies left and of course they are made with the love and care that Karen and Ben always demonstrate with their work.
