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Gareth E. Rees

@garetherees.bsky.social

Guitar/vocals in psych-noise band, Black Arches. Author of Unofficial Britain, Car Park Life, Sunken Lands, Marshland & more. Psychogeography. Mythology. Music. Ecology. https://www.instagram.com/black_arches_hastings

1,324 Followers  |  519 Following  |  668 Posts  |  Joined: 08.09.2023
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Posts by Gareth E. Rees (@garetherees.bsky.social)

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Terminal Zones by Gareth E. Rees - Trending Books I loved the stories “A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes” and “Thenar Space” because the exploration of unconventional characters (The former is about a man

Terminal Zones by Gareth E. Rees

https://www.booksns.com/191229/

I loved the stories “A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes” and “Thenar Space” because the exploration of unconventional characters (The former is about a man falling in love with a disused electricity pylon, and the latter is about a …

14.02.2026 17:50 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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oxland cylinder, by Kemper Norton 10 track album

As our latest opus nears completion, why not fill the time by downloading the previous KN albums from our
" Cornish Industrial " range ?
Brunton Calciner, Oxland Cylinder and Lowermoor are all available from a pound on our site for today only x

kempernorton.bandcamp.com/album/oxland...

06.02.2026 12:25 — 👍 3    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0
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[News] Black Arches With Sexton Ming unveil the live video for "The Sailor's Daughter" from their album "Folly" Hastings, UK based Experimental Psychedelic/Noise Rock band Black Arches With Sexton Ming have unveiled the live video for “The Sailor’s Daughter” from their latest album, “Folly,” released on March 1...

[News] Black Arches With Sexton Ming unveil the live video for "The Sailor's Daughter" from their album "Folly"
@rocketrecordings.bsky.social
progrockjournal.com/news-black-a...

#PRJ #BlackArches #SextonMing #LiveVideo #NewRelease #RocketRecordings #SextonMing #Experimental #PsychRock #MusicNews

26.01.2026 18:47 — 👍 3    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

Thanks Alan!

30.01.2026 14:50 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Finished THE STONE TIDE by @garetherees.bsky.social last night, read in three sittings over five days. An incredible piece of work that makes you crawl inside yourself and examine your flaws and mistakes just as the narrator does. With added Hastings psychogeography and pain and grief.

30.01.2026 12:42 — 👍 1    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 1

Cheers!

25.01.2026 11:05 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
The Stone Tide, Adventures at the End of the World, Gareth E. Rees.

The problems started the day we moved to Hastings...'
When Gareth E. Rees moves to a dilapidated Victorian house in Hastings he begins to piece together an occult puzzle connecting Aleister Crowley, John Logie Baird and the Piltdown Man hoaxer. As freak storms and tidal surges ravage the coast, Rees is beset by memories of his best friend's tragic death in St Andrews twenty years earlier. Convinced that apocalypse approaches and his past is out to get him, Rees embarks on a journey away from his family, deep into history and to the very edge of the imagination. Tormented by possessed seagulls, mutant eels and unresolved guilt, how much of reality can he trust?
THE STONE TIDE is a novel about grief, loss, history and the imagination. It is about how people make the place and the place makes the person. Above all it is about the stories we tell to make sense of the world.

The Stone Tide, Adventures at the End of the World, Gareth E. Rees. The problems started the day we moved to Hastings...' When Gareth E. Rees moves to a dilapidated Victorian house in Hastings he begins to piece together an occult puzzle connecting Aleister Crowley, John Logie Baird and the Piltdown Man hoaxer. As freak storms and tidal surges ravage the coast, Rees is beset by memories of his best friend's tragic death in St Andrews twenty years earlier. Convinced that apocalypse approaches and his past is out to get him, Rees embarks on a journey away from his family, deep into history and to the very edge of the imagination. Tormented by possessed seagulls, mutant eels and unresolved guilt, how much of reality can he trust? THE STONE TIDE is a novel about grief, loss, history and the imagination. It is about how people make the place and the place makes the person. Above all it is about the stories we tell to make sense of the world.

2020 #82
The final book finished in 2020 was this eclectic novel full of psychogeography and strange goings on in Hastings from @garetherees.bsky.social and @influxpress.bsky.social . There's some blurb in the alt text as usual and this remains one of my personal favourite.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
💡📚
#booksky

24.01.2026 00:13 — 👍 8    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0
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Wrexham: 'Creepy' sculptures appear near former Brymbo Steelworks The statues prompted a flurry of speculation among locals before their origin was revealed.

This was one of the locations I explored in 'Unofficial Britain': the site of the former steelworks where my grandfather and uncle worked in the '70s. share.google/vpOu9fvu4J03...

21.01.2026 15:10 — 👍 12    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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Driftwood dragon 16 Jan — 15 Mar 2026 at the Paul Smith Gallery in London, United Kingdom

Hackney-based artist, Nick Jensen has made a series of paintings inspired by my book 'Marshland' for his exhibition at the Paul Smith Gallery, which includes a new short fiction I penned for the occasion www.meer.com/en/102905-dr... cc @influxpress.bsky.social

21.01.2026 09:54 — 👍 10    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
Post image

the sheer weirdness of Victorian classifieds

12.01.2026 16:08 — 👍 36    🔁 11    💬 4    📌 1
Afrosound - El Regreso de E.T. el Extraterrestre [Colombia, Cumbia/Afrobeat/Disco/Space/Rock] [1983] - this is just crazy as it sounds
Afrosound - El Regreso de E.T. el Extraterrestre [Colombia, Cumbia/Afrobeat/Disco/Space/Rock] [1983] - this is just crazy as it sounds

Afrosound - El Regreso de E.T. el Extraterrestre [Colombia, Cumbia/Afrobeat/Disco/Space/Rock] [1983] - this is just crazy as it sounds
https://redd.it/518rng
https://youtu.be/R_5xtN8CUYk

31.12.2025 10:59 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Black Arches with Sexton Ming - Folly, by Black Arches 7 track album

In March, we released 'Folly' a collaboration with Sexton Ming on @rocketrecordings.bsky.social blackarches.bandcamp.com/album/black-... "The Arches trio cover every blade of astral grass with rare Faust-cubed abstraction." - The Quietus

31.12.2025 12:22 — 👍 7    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Bin day was so traumatic for me (in my previous house) that I wrote a story about it in my book Terminal Zones.

31.12.2025 12:19 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thanks Bob! Also had a bin day panic because of full bin and no collection yesterday. Thankfully they just turned up. Order is restored.

31.12.2025 12:16 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Black Arches With Sexton Ming – Bin Day
YouTube video by Rocket Recordings Black Arches With Sexton Ming – Bin Day

And I made a video about bins youtu.be/OXvHXTFfI-w?...

31.12.2025 11:15 — 👍 6    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 1
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Things that never happened Available on vinyl from elastic stage

Also this year, I played some guitar and shouted some vocals on some of the tracks on 'Things that never happened' by Black Adastra @blackadastra.bsky.social
on.soundcloud.com/C0rENUavzU9Z...

31.12.2025 11:11 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Monstrosities Mon Amour: Junction 3 of the M32 in Bristol with Gareth E Rees #5. John Grindrod meets writer Gareth E Rees to explore the strange hidden life of a pedestrian junction of a motorway and the haunted power of cardigans.

From earlier this year - my tuppenceworth on inner city motorways and cardigans - 'Monstrosities Mon Amour: Junction 3 of the M32 in Bristol' - with @grindrod.bsky.social johngrindrod.substack.com/p/monstrosit...

31.12.2025 10:57 — 👍 8    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 2
Low winter sunshine blasts through the blinds of a house window

Low winter sunshine blasts through the blinds of a house window

I wrote a micro piece about midwinter sunshine and interstellar visitors for @necessaryfiction.com's 'Points of Light' necessaryfiction.com/stories/poin...

31.12.2025 10:45 — 👍 6    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

Thanks!

28.12.2025 10:44 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Car Park Life, A Portrait of Britain's Unexplored Urban Wilderness, by Gareth E. Rees.

Car parks: commonplace urban landscapes, little-explored and rarely featured in art and music, yet they shape the aesthetics of our towns and cities. Hotspots for crime, rage and sexual deviancy; a blind spot in which activities go unnoticed. Skateboarding, car stunts, drug dealing, dogging, murder.
Gareth E. Rees believes that the retail car park has as much mystery, magic and terror as any mountain, meadow or wood. He's out to prove it by walking the car parks of Britain, journeying across the country from Plymouth to Edinburgh, much to the horror of his family, friends - and, most of all - himself. He finds Sir Francis Drake outside B&Q, standing stones in a retail park, and a dead body beside Sainsbury's.
In this darkly satirical work of non-fiction, Gareth E. Rees presents a troubling vision of Brexit Britain through a common space we know far less about than we think.

Car Park Life, A Portrait of Britain's Unexplored Urban Wilderness, by Gareth E. Rees. Car parks: commonplace urban landscapes, little-explored and rarely featured in art and music, yet they shape the aesthetics of our towns and cities. Hotspots for crime, rage and sexual deviancy; a blind spot in which activities go unnoticed. Skateboarding, car stunts, drug dealing, dogging, murder. Gareth E. Rees believes that the retail car park has as much mystery, magic and terror as any mountain, meadow or wood. He's out to prove it by walking the car parks of Britain, journeying across the country from Plymouth to Edinburgh, much to the horror of his family, friends - and, most of all - himself. He finds Sir Francis Drake outside B&Q, standing stones in a retail park, and a dead body beside Sainsbury's. In this darkly satirical work of non-fiction, Gareth E. Rees presents a troubling vision of Brexit Britain through a common space we know far less about than we think.

2020 #55
My first encounter with the distinctive work of @garetherees.bsky.social , one of the best chroniclers of modern Britain around. Love the quote that described this as a "retail park Heart of Darkness." 😄 There's info in the alt text and I loved it. @influxpress.bsky.social
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
💡📚
#booksky

28.12.2025 00:02 — 👍 11    🔁 4    💬 2    📌 0

Day 2 of our solstice gathering features writing by @mizuki-yama.bsky.social, Catherine Reedy, Kendra Cardin, @garetherees.bsky.social, @nonabiding.bsky.social, @erinkeane.bsky.social, @kleopatraolympiou.bsky.social, Lleyton Michael Kane, and Warren Stoddard II. necessaryfiction.com/stories/poin...

24.12.2025 14:17 — 👍 23    🔁 7    💬 0    📌 4

Day One of our solstice gathering features writing by @rosaleenlynch.bsky.social, @travisflatt.bsky.social, @raymondbrunell.bsky.social, @eileentomarchio.bsky.social, @janewords.bsky.social, Talya Byrd, Carol M. Quinn, Tanya Kornilovich, and Joe Kalovac. necessaryfiction.com/stories/poin...

21.12.2025 14:12 — 👍 16    🔁 8    💬 0    📌 3
A snapshot of two copies of "The Anechoic Chamber", one of which is inserted halfway into a very ordinary blue-green ribbed sock

A snapshot of two copies of "The Anechoic Chamber", one of which is inserted halfway into a very ordinary blue-green ribbed sock

If you are still looking for a "stocking filler" please bear in mind that "The Anechoic Chamber" is a slimline A-format paperback, so it fits snugly in a standard men's sock or the pocket of a winter coat. This also means savings on wrapping paper, postage, etc. and it's only £9.99.

08.12.2025 14:53 — 👍 44    🔁 13    💬 2    📌 7

Haha I can bet. I was at St Andrews for my post grad in '95 and I recall the golf course being that kind of zone (at night, off season.)

08.12.2025 13:10 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Pool table in restored gun battery

Pool table in restored gun battery

This one had a pool table!

08.12.2025 12:58 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Forth road bridge empty but for one female figure in the distance

Forth road bridge empty but for one female figure in the distance

Forth bridge viewed in distance from empty forth road bridge

Forth bridge viewed in distance from empty forth road bridge

Selfie of Gareth Rees  on cycle path on empty bridge

Selfie of Gareth Rees on cycle path on empty bridge

Faded image of pedestrian footway symbol on ragged looking road surface

Faded image of pedestrian footway symbol on ragged looking road surface

28 days later on the Forth Road Bridge....

08.12.2025 12:56 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Sideways view of Queensferry crossing reflected in the forth of Forth, Edinburgh, Scotland

Sideways view of Queensferry crossing reflected in the forth of Forth, Edinburgh, Scotland

The crossing.

08.12.2025 12:43 — 👍 8    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Concrete WW1 gun battery

Concrete WW1 gun battery

Close up of former gun placement area

Close up of former gun placement area

Downstairs exterior of the bunker

Downstairs exterior of the bunker

Bedroom in the interior where the shells used to be stored

Bedroom in the interior where the shells used to be stored

Spent the past few nights in a pre-WWI gun battery on the Firth of Forth trove.scot share.google/vr3egGRKvcjD...

08.12.2025 12:39 — 👍 13    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0
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New Weird Britain: 2025 in Review by Noel Gardner | The Quietus Not content to merely look back at the last 12 months of New Weird Britain’s musical content, fine as it’s been, this evening I’ve looked back eight years to the first of these year-ending listicle bu...

"The Arches trio cover every blade of astral grass with rare Faust-cubed abstraction."

Great to see Black Arches & Sexton Ming's album 'Folly' in @thequietus.com's 'Best New Weird Britain Albums of 2025':

thequietus.com/tq-charts/co...

05.12.2025 15:39 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
The Quietus - new weird Britain 2025 in review by Noel Gardner

The Quietus - new weird Britain 2025 in review by Noel Gardner

Black Arches Sexton Ming Folly, "this seven song LP by Sussex psych unit Black Arches with Kent poet Sexton Ming has thr undiluted New Weird Britain juice for sure, the product of a gang of outsiders in a smallish town (Hastings) hitting on something that slaps even if you're not in their gang."

Black Arches Sexton Ming Folly, "this seven song LP by Sussex psych unit Black Arches with Kent poet Sexton Ming has thr undiluted New Weird Britain juice for sure, the product of a gang of outsiders in a smallish town (Hastings) hitting on something that slaps even if you're not in their gang."

New Weird Britain: 2025 in review @thequietus.com features Black Arches with Sexton Ming's album 'Folly' thequietus.com/tq-charts/co...

06.12.2025 11:36 — 👍 6    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0