A pioneering vinyl record embedded with coal dust, believed to be the world’s first of its kind, will launch at the Pitman’s Parliament in Durham during a landmark renewable energy transition conference on 3 November. Titled Ancestral Reverb, the 20-minute track features the voice of Newcastle indie folk artist Richard Dawson reciting verbatim words from former miners and their families, set against a backdrop of colliery music spanning over a century. Produced by climate hope organisation Threads in the Ground, the project blends spoken word, electronica, and brass band performances to evoke the North East’s mining heritage.
The record incorporates the actual ‘sound of carbon’ captured by musicians descending into an old drift mine at Beamish Colliery, where they digitally recorded the mine’s natural reverb for the track’s audio layers. Described as ‘Moby meets Brassed Off,’ Ancestral Reverb combines historical recordings of colliery pit bands from as early as 1903 with new contributions from the Durham Miners’ Association brass band, curated into a lush, crackling electronic suite. Richard Dawson shared his enthusiasm, stating: “I’m honoured to have had the chance to lend my voice to this important, strange, and stirring work. The long poem, assembled from recordings of interviews with mining families and set to a lushly crackling suite of electronica, is beautifully balanced and thought-provoking. It evokes conflicting feelings – pride and dismay, hope and fear, community-spirit versus abandonment – by placing layer upon layer of crucial little details one on top of the other to create a sort of intoxicating cascade. I find it very moving.”
The production process innovatively uses chunks of coal collected from Blackhall colliery beach, which were smashed into dust and visibly embedded into the transparent vinyl for a tactile connection to the region’s past. This coal dust also served to ‘carbon print’ documentary photographs of the project, marking what producers believe is the first creative use of such material in this way. The track’s spoken word element was curated by poet Jacob Polley, drawing from interviews with some of the last living deep coal miners in the North East, along with their children and grandchildren, as they reflect on mining heritage and its ties to climate change discussions.
Just 100 copies of the unique record will be pressed, with select editions preserved in key archives including Redhills, the National Coal Mining Museum, and the British Library, while additional copies will be gifted to the interviewed families for future generations. The piece will be previewed to delegates at the conference hosted by the Durham Energy Institute, aiming to foster dialogue among former mining communities about their legacy of solidarity in the context of today’s energy transitions. Acclaimed North East photographers Andy Martin and Rachel Deakin documented the entire project, capturing its visual and emotional depth.
Threads in the Ground director Adam Cooper emphasized the project’s intent, saying: “We want to honour the past we inherit, to inspire more people to have their voices heard to build our future. We are at a crucial moment in history where the changes we set in motion now around our energy infrastructure will shape the future for all our communities.” He further noted: “Music and photography have a visceral and democratic power that can amplify conversations around our carbon future in a meaningful way.” Through Ancestral Reverb, the initiative seeks to bridge historical pride with forward-looking climate action, using art to engage and inspire communities affected by the shift from coal.
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