August 4th marks the 449th anniversary of the most notable recorded appearance of the East Anglian hellhound Black Shuck. It’s unlikely to be an anniversary that’s made it into your Google Calendar. But for Chris Spalton, aka The Breedling, it’s the chief inspiration behind his new album, A Straunge And Terrible Wunder.
This is music designed to disturb. Using a jet-black palette of drones, synths and field recordings, Spalton drags one of Britain’s oldest parazoological phenomena into the present day. It feels as though the album has been dredged up out of some Fenland bog. Like the most effective horrors, it leaves you with a knot in the pit of your stomach, and a self-flagellatory desire to go through it all again.

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