The work traces a Calderdale walk from Lumb Falls over to Blake Dean (upstream from Hardcastle Craggs). It was recorded over a week in response to a last-minute plea from Wiaiwya‘s John Jervis for something for his series of seven 77-minute songs in aid of Medicins sans Frontiers. Artwork is by the marvellous Maxim Peter Griffin.

Mark told us: ‘I wanted to create a piece along the route from Lumb Falls to Blake Dean, two popular and beautiful spots in adjacent river valleys. The route took me past a ruined farmhouse marked ‘Coppy’ on the map, a collapsed shooting butt on Shackleton Knoll itself, what appeared to be an overgrown Victorian landscaped waterfall valley, a section of woodland river and finally to the stone supports that once held up the railway which moved the stone for local reservoir construction.

I could not complete the recordings all at once so, over a period of four evenings and one morning, I would start at Lumb Hole and venture a little further to my recording location, before returning. On the Thursday I walked the entire distance to Blake Dean and back, a round trip of a coincidental 7.7km.

The sections of the piece reflect the atmosphere of the locations. All the parts were recorded in the field using an iPad, a midi keyboard, a bluetooth speaker and a portable multi-track recorder.’