The Long Dead Stars
Electronic Dance Poetry
​
Made in Yorkshire
About The Long Dead Stars
The Long Dead Stars are a fusion of poetry and dance music about rocks and stars. We combine our arts practice with our academic research, writing electronic dance poetry for recordings and writing academic papers for conferences and journals.
​
Claire Hind is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at York St John University.
​
Robert Wilsmore is a freelance composer and independent scholar, formerly head of the school of Arts at York St John.​
Debut Album
Whitby Mudstone
Our debut Album, Whitby Mudstone, was released on streaming platforms on 2nd March 2025.
We performed it on the night of the release at Boggle Hole (just south of Whitby) including a beach walk (/dance) to the track 'The Crinoids of Boggle Hole', the penultimate track on the Album.
​
Listen to the Album here:
​
​
Walking with The Long Dead Stars
Dancing Under Dark Skies, premiered with an audience at the Dark Skies Festival, on Blakey Ridge, North York Moors, 25th February 2024. It was written for the festival, for us to turn off our lights and draw attention to the night sky. We invited 30 walkers to join us on a dark sky walk across rural terrain, to the high moor where we all listened and danced to the song. We engaged in slow walking before we danced, with Silent Disco headphones. The Lyrics were inspired by 3 things:
Commentary on the geological environment of the North York Moors, where we premiered the track - its subterranean history.
A mapping of the night sky above on that specific date of the premiere: the position of the moon, the constellation of stars, nebulae and what can be seen with the naked eye when the lights are turned off.
A little playful humour on the naming of things, how humans get obsessed with the naming of stuff and come up with nick names, sometimes tripping up on meaning and the historical order of named objects.
We wanted to capture a way of working these lyrics into our favourite synth sound - dance music that gets a crowd moving to feel euphoric
