The Artists In Residence
★★★
Stay
PENKILN BURN. LP
KLF conceptualist’s hosanna to the King.
Bill Drummond has had regrets about The KLF’s decision to burn a million pounds back in 1994, but Newton Stewart’s greatest gift to conceptual art continues to find the funds for hard-to-follow projects, with Stay the latest of them. Stax-toned soundtrack to an as-yet unscreened film made at his Curfew Tower in Cushendall, County Antrim, it features a series of artists in residence writing their second-best songs for the ghost of Elvis Presley (now managed by Drummond). It is an easier listen than 2024’s Voices From The Galloverse – another Drummond-curated soundtrack featuring Teardrops/Bunnymen scene covers recorded in the style of Gaelic psalms – with the closing salvo of Duke Spirit’s Forgotten, Tanya Mellotte’s Prestwick 249 and Arborist’s Are You Still The King? skewering the elegiac but slightly bewildered mood. Copies are available online or (apparently) by visiting Kearney’s Flesher, the butcher’s on Cushendall’s main street, and asking for Zippy.