Back in 2015, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the BBC broadcast of Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange’s Inventions For Radio: The Dreams, Sheffield’s Eccentronic Research Council released their own super-limited edition cassette soundtracking the recalled dreams (and nightmares) of friends, artists, actors, musicians, scientists, poets and filmmakers. The release was called The Dreamcatcher Tapes Volume 1. Five years on, and with a large part of the planet under lockdown and with nowhere to go but within their imagination, the ERC put a call out once again to music collaborators, nurses, teachers, truck drivers, writers, journalists and shop workers to upon waking, record their dreams straight into their phones and to then send them to the ERC to soundtrack. And thus, Volume 2 of The Dreamcatcher Tapes was born!

Across the two volumes there’s film maker Carol Morley, Andy Votel from Finders Keepers records, John Doran from The Quietus (who also wrote the albums brilliant sleeve notes), acclaimed writer Benjamin Myers, musicians such as Evangeline Ling from the group Audiobooks, Lias Saoudi from Fat White Family, Sidonie from The Orielles, journalists /writers Wyndham Wallace and Daniel Dylan Wray amongst a whole array of musician friends, eccentrics and people with actual proper jobs.

I was delighted to be asked to contribute a lockdown dream to this collection.

It is now available on cassette or double coloured vinyl from Castles in Space. Visit Rough Trade or Piccadilly Records to buy a copy.

“As ‘Algeria’ had become my Mastermind subject this year, I devoted each spare hour to reading books on its history, the war of independence, or watching films, and reading its translated literature. When I wandered through Hathershelf woods in my hometown of Mytholmroyd each day, sheltering from pouring rain in wellington boots and fingerless gloves, my mind constantly wandered to that place I was supposed to be heading, rather than the one I was currently standing in, with its rotting leaves, knee-high bogs and vicious westerly winds that emptied their sodden contents above my head.”

Shadows and Reflections: Adelle Stripe at Caught by the River