Selenodesy (2023)

Composed in the sparsely populated countryside of the Scottish Borders, Selenodesy can be thought of as a sister album to 2019’s Border Ballads. Whereas the landscape itself served as the focus for the earlier work, the lack of light pollution in the Scottish countryside served to direct Skelton’s attention to the austere majesty of the night sky.

Written during the pandemic, it is as if, during those long months of lockdown, Skelton tapped into a series of sidereal electromagnetic transmissions and transposed them into musical form. It is no coincidence that the Kielder Observatory is located nearby, just over the border in Northumberland.

Appropriately, the stark white-on-black album artwork features the geometrical drawings from Copernicus’s 1543 treatise, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

Released on vinyl by Phantom Limb.