It’s been a little while since we last heard from Deadman’s Ghost – the boundary-dissolving project of Belfast sound artist Jason Mills – but his return is nothing short of spellbinding. Having released some masterfully shapeshifting LPs, among them Hypocratical Oath, Saccadic Rhythms, The Broken Zoetrope and Cerebral Frontier, Mills has long operated in his own slipstream, merging avant-garde electronics, drone, folk instrumentation and ambient textures into work that feels truly scopic and deeply uncanny.
Now, he re-emerges with A Votive Offering, a potent new album on Cruel Nature Records (out 22nd September on vinyl, cassette, and digital). It’s a collection that feels steeped in soil and silence; an ode to Ireland’s overlooked places of ritual and ruin. Composed using drones, dark folk motifs, ancient samples and pulsing electronics, each track traces the resonance of a real Irish location where folklore lingers: a clairvoyant’s collapsed cottage; oracle-like standing stones; a madness-curing well; and a forgotten cave where offerings were once left for spirits. These aren’t simply mythologised spaces: they’re still there, tucked behind hedgerows and fences, scattered across the increasingly homogenous rural landscape.
Today, we’re very pleased to share a first look at the video for ‘Chthonic Currents’, the opening track of A Votive Offering. Filmed by Ben Jones at Ballynamintra cave in the Dungarvan Valley, Co. Waterford, the video is grounded in a slow, deliberate study of space, which feels like a fitting prelude to an album concerned with the unseen and half-forgotten.
The cave itself is no arbitrary setting. A long, dissolved limestone passage stretching into subterranean dark, Ballynamintra has yielded Neolithic bones and artefacts placed for funerary and ritual purposes. In ancient times, it would have been seen as an entrance to the spirit world; a threshold space, both literal and symbolic. Mirroring that, Mills recorded sounds inside the cave: dripping water, tank drum, singing bowl and natural ambience, before composing the track in response to the slowed-down footage. The piece is anchored by bowed banjo, lending a rare, organicm folk-horror undertone, and was mixed in collaboration with long-time producer David Baxter, who many of you will also know as Kab Driver.
The result is a special ritual document and a gesture toward the hidden coordinates that structure the album’s intent.
A Votive Offering is out 22nd September via Cruel Nature. Pre-order now: lathe-cut vinyl orders close 28th July.
