“Hauntology” is one of those difficult philosophy words that seems designed to exist on the margins of our consciousness. The term originates in the work of the notorious Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and is first mentioned in his book Specters of Marx, which was originally delivered as a series of lectures at the University of California in 1993. In Derrida, the concept of hauntology is very much a political one. But the word "hauntology" has gained the currency it has today thanks to Mark Fisher, philosopher, cultural critic and blogger, who took his own life in 2017. Fisher has posthumously assumed the sort of legendary status reserved for thinkers considered to be among the most important or insightful of their time. In Fisher’s view, the 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion”; the current cultural moment is “in the grip of a formal nostalgia”, in which ostensibly “new” things are produced only through the imitation and pastiche of old forms. It was originally as a way of understanding the “loss of the future” that Fisher – in correspondence with the music critic Simon Reynolds – began to invoke the concept of hauntology.

This project by Eighth Tower Records is dedicated to the memory of Mark Fisher. Special thanks to all musicians who joined it: Robin Storey (Rapoon), Gavin Morrow (Grey Frequency), Robin The Fog (Howlround), Raffaele Pezzella (Sonologyst), Michael Bonaventure, Ellen Southern (and the Dead Space Chamber Music band), Pascal Savy, Drew Carpenter (Foreseer). We all paid a tribute to Mark Fisher, to the past as well as to all the lost futures, but still we forward with hope in our eyes.