FIRE OF THE FENS

Anthony Ellinson was a record producer who went from being studio tea boy at Olympic, to an engineer at Trident, to his first steps in production in the early 1970s. He quickly became the go-to producer for a growing list of psychedelic folk bands like Taking Back Autumn, and The Wild Hares and then for a band that came out of nowhere, never gave an interview or spoke about themselves, but built a cult live reputation in just a few short months: Wanderer Fen.
Record companies were falling over themselves to sign the Fen, and the band could have had their choice of producers, but they chose Anthony, took a small advance but much more control in a deal with Archipelago Records, and began to record the tracks intended for an album the band announced was to be called Open The Door.
Recording was problematic from the beginning. Studio gear broke down, the electricity supply to the building suffered random outages, and the band would disappear for two weeks and then come back and record for forty-eight hours straight, allowing no one in the studio other than themselves and Ellinson.
His friends became increasingly concerned as he lost weight, and looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. His hands shook slightly, and his eyes were always moving, looking over people’s shoulders and around the room as if he expected to see someone or something there. His friends saw him less and less though, as he spent all of his time in the studio when the band weren’t recording, playing the tapes over and over, headphones on, hands moving on the deck as if in search of something only he could hear. When an old friend from Trident delivered a tape delay unit he was lending Ellinson to replace one that had broken in the studio he asked how recording was going, and the producer replied that he could hear something in the music, and he had to find it. His friend assumed he meant some interference, an annoying hum, and thought nothing else of it.
But three days later Anthony Ellinson went to the studio at two in the morning, poured petrol from a can over all of the tapes, the desk, and himself, then sat at the recording desk and lit a match.
�Several of the people who lived near the studio watched the building burn and the sparks leap up into the sky, and said afterwards that they could have sworn that they heard singing. It sounded as if it came from right in front of them but also a long way away, and it made them feel sick and disorientated, as if they were standing on the deck of a boat in a storm.��
No one knows what Wanderer Fen made of all of this, because after that night no one saw or heard from them again, and the one phone number that Archipelago had for them would just ring three times and then answer to what sounded like the crackle of flames.