FOLLOWING Marc Almond’s much lauded guest appearance on John Harle’s ‘Art Music’, the two Ivor Novello 2013 winning artists have collaborated to create a modern classic.

London and its darkest stories are the theme for The Tyburn Tree, an epic song cycle that shines a lantern into the terrifying corners of London's history. From the infamous Tyburn Tree gallows themselves, to legends of London ghosts such as Spring Heeled Jack and The Vampire of Highgate to the chronicled horror of Jack the Ripper and the Ratcliffe Highway murders, The Tyburn Tree is a haunted history of London's streets of fear.

Marc Almond is our tour guide through these dark tales from the shadows. In turn darkly humorous and heroic, Almond’s incomparable voice combined with Harle’s pulsating score offers a powerful musical experience. Almond's own lyrics form the backbone of the album, drawing on his personal fascination with London's anti-history, alongside texts from visionary Londoner William Blake (Fortress and Jerusalem), the poet Tom Pickard (a terrifying reworking of London Bridge is Falling Down) and Elizabethan magus John Dee (Dark Angel). But while the lyrics stalk the darkest passageways of London’s history the music is unashamedly contemporary: drawing on his own fervent song-writing skills, electronic and ambient music, John Harle (composer of ‘O Mistress Mine’ for Elvis Costello, and the theme to BBC1’s Silent Witness) has matched Almond’s lyrics with dramatic, bitter-sweet songs full of emotion, driving rhythms and black humour to create a powerful concept album. Along for the ride are noted soprano Sarah Leonard and great London poet and author Iain Sinclair who reads from his own texts. But it's the voice of Marc Almond that is the spiritual medium from which appears the ghosts of Dark London and as Harle states in the attached essay - London has found its Anti-Hero.

Marc Almond and John Harle come to the Colston Hall, Bristol, next Thursday, March 6