Whether it’s all the turmoil in the economy, our indecision and uncertainty about government and the future, or because of a surge of interest in history, the English Civil War is drawing artists’ attention.

First it was Darren Hayman – once the leader of cult indie heroes Hefner – who recorded an album about witch trials in Essex in the 17th century. He enjoyed the research so much he followed up The Violence with a record of folk songs from the era called Bugbears.

Earlier in the summer, Brighton-based film director Ben Wheatley tackled the fall-out of the civil war – well, four men lost in a field adjacent to a bloody 17th century battle who scoff some mind-bending mushrooms – in A Field In England.

Kevin Pearce is the latest to visit the grizzly epoch. A month ago he released an eerie – and excellent – collection inspired by a man who claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins.

Pearce, who has a rich mellow voice and cites the old folk guard such as Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and Fairport Convention as important artists, thinks there is something in the air at the moment.

“I think politically what is going on now is we are going in loops. It keeps coming back to this rich get richer thing. It’s been going on for centuries and it has not changed.

“It is all to do with finance and that all boils down to the fact that if someone has got power, they can get away with it more.”

Both Pearce and Hopkins have called Mistley, Essex, home.

But in Hopkins’s time there would have been witch dunking and hangings.

“There are lots of weird and wonderful things about this little nondescript English village,” explains Pearce.

“There is the oldest oak tree in England, Old Knobbley, and 600 yards from my house is a restaurant called The Mistley Thorn, which, when I looked into its history, it turned out Hopkins used to own.

“I don’t believe in God or ghosts or fairies but when you walk around this place you do get a sensation of what went on here.”

The pared-back sound of Tortured By Ghosts hints at the metaphorical ghosts Pearce imagined walking around the village.

“I used Matthew Hopkins’s character like an actor would use a character to stimulate emotions. Hence the record’s title, Matthew Hopkins And The Wormhole, and that many elements of the album are about the history of the area.”

An old friend of Pearce’s, Dean Honer, once of the All Seeing I, who has worked with Add N To X, Human League, Richard Hawley and Pulp, mastered the record.

Honer loves the tracks so much he is putting the final touches to a record of electronic reworkings out next month – Act Two, as Pearce calls it.

  • Kevin Pearce supports Keston Cobbler's Club at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, Middle Street, Brighton, on Tuesday, September 24. Pearce will be on stage at 7.30pm. Tickets £7/£5, call 01273 749465.