Mandrake, Scream thy first scream...

Informal, rapidly written thoughts on albums that

appear first in our blog but would otherwise be lost.

Sinister Seal of the Yellow eyed Children....  (early May 2005)

...deep in the forest the yellow eyed children saw the profane white eyed man walking, lost in their kingdom. Averting from his gaze, they sat whispering to each other unseen. Soon the traps would claim the outsider and then the feast would begin....
 

May brings the Spring back to western Europe, with warmth and light returning, replenishing the land. May Day sees the crowning of a May Queen, of celebration and hope for the Summer's bounty. It has also brought forth a wide range of new music.

Our first listen is from Ireland on The Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree's new CDr release 'The Cat's Melodeon'. This release shows them again at the forefront of a renewed folk music, a music carefully incorporating psychedelia and nature but never losing sight of it's traditional core. This is music for remote communities, the ancient customs continued. It is totally unspoiled in it's perfect realisation. Without ever being intimidating it is uncompromising. For those who long for a new form of traditional music, it resides here waiting reminding me amazingly of the classic band, Mr Fox.

A sister band and release to this is United Bible Studies here on 'The Shore That Fears The Sea'. Whereas in the former incarnation they are bold, confident even strident, as United Bible Studies they explore softly, whispering in your ear, lulling you with gentle stories. The two bands seem like two halves of a larger whole. In this guise they sit observing, listening and taking in the wonder as 'the sun dances on the waters'. Even though it may not cry out it's name loudly this is important music that shows how the organic evolution of the new folk music is creating wonderful works that genuinely tap into our communal heritage.

An eagerly awaited new release had been Keith Wood's work as Hush Arbors on 'Cleaning the Bone'. On this short CDr Keith moves away for now from the intimate folk songs of his previous works to record one flowing instrumental piece that goes from exploratory banjo and viola deeper into the forest with intense drones and playful folk flute. Too much music is called 'forest folk' but this is a powerful piece that evokes the depths and unseen thicket of the trees. A sense of not quite belonging there, of the forest being unreachable, even threatening. This walks somehow between folk and the drone-intensity of John Cale era Velvet Underground live.

Keith's musical partner in Golden Oaks is Brad Rose of The North Sea who is also part of The Juniper Meadows. This band now have their new CDr out 'A Forest of Lights'. Brad is particularly proud of this one and with good reason. The Juniper Meadows make a simple, instinctive music of banjo, guitar and background hiss (which sometimes seems the most important element) occasionally complemented by reed organs, zither and the like. They keep the music simple, direct and intimate though which adds to a feeling of this being a personal music, of connecting more with you than music with obvious and large production. Using this approach the music is joined to the land, a true folk music spanning USA mountain music, British traditional music and a sense of unfulfilled potential in modern society.

There is a continuum here, even if it isn't obvious. This is the new folk music, stemming from those living in the city but yearning for their imagined rural landscapes. Projecting their need to escape modern complexity into the landscape, the rural as retreat. It's this thread that sits at the heart of much modern music of this sort and is captured brilliantly on the new definitive compilation from MusicYourMindWillLoveYou 'Charms Cut From Our Trees'. This CD brings together artists from Australia (centred around Michael Donnelly's collective) and USA (around Brad Rose) and complementary artists such as Rameses III from UK. Ranging from the delicate hazy folk of Golden Oaks, Keijo and Hush Arbors, via the mystical maelstrom of Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood to the frustrated roar of Terracid and back to the landscape comfort of Rameses III and Snowfox. In all seriousness, if you want to understand what's going on underground at the edges of wyrd folk and beyond, this is the single CDr to go for. The Rameses III track alone had the writer still in reverie, we all need this music.

UK guitarist Ben Reynolds has a growing urgency at the sense of his music, increasingly lifting from the ground either flying over the land or on his last release, into the cosmos. On 'Silver Songs on Ghost of a Cube' he seems to be ascending further into the atoms and molecules that make up the music itself. His original finger picking style is now transformed into dense clouds of sound where notes occasionally are released into the air. His music on this release compares to musique concrete composers like Bernard Parmegianni or Iannis Xenakis as much as guitar players. His journey like John Fahey before him is taking the guitar out of purely traditional instrumentation and into a tool of personal transformation.

More minimalist but equally finding space in the music are Wax Ghost on 'The Halo of Mount St Helens'. Although electronic this is stark and contemplative, like machines left running to consider the nature of god. It's ponderous in the best way, tiny layers of electronics drifting, playing almost randoms but in synchronisation. Too suspense filled to be ambient, too stately to engage directly. This is music to clear out your mind, it has no reference points, no connection to any form of popular modern music. Yet still as your mind drifts you find the music evoking images, of geese flying over ponds on track three. But why should this be on this artifical folk music for automatons. Do robots dream of electrical forests?

Uton's 'The August Light' is that robot dream. Here electronic drones and pulses merge with accordion, noises, distant signals, ghost calls and rumbling low percussion. Here there are no people, no animals, just nature, land and eons of time. Glaciers form, move over centuries and carve the landscape. Music as deep and intense is the consequence of the mental journey by these musicians, it is an end point, where it is concentrated into pure sound that becomes one with the air.

On his new split release with Davenport, James Blackshaw moves slightly away from the longer raga-guitar pieces to find his own musical clearing, here sat in an early morning meadow. His sustained guitar evocations set alongside lonesome birdsong. On 'White Goddess' he produces a new beautiful music, the folk music of Britain and the middle east fused into a new form. This is a more varied set of pieces for James, seeming happy to follow where the guitar takes him, letting it come naturally and it's even more fresh and vibrant because of this. On last track 'Cherry Blossom Battle Hymn' it's clear that James is moving to use folk as a basis for his explorations, connecting traditional elements to his middle eastern music creates a psychedelic element that takes us back to John Renbourn's work on tracks like 'The Cuckoo'.

Davenport continue to beguile and confuse on their side of the split release with James Blackshaw. In the last couple of months about six CDrs of theirs have been released by different labels, all of them different ranging from the meditative and musical to the noisily confrontrational and chaotic. This tends initially more to the quieter, rumbling soundscapes with chimes, percussion, bells, nature sounds, droning strings and percussive clatters sounding like the quiet just before a storm hits. That moment of tense silence, of everything falling still but you know the ominous power to come, that's what we're hearing before it slowly slides into the otherworldly, as though another dimension begins to creep into ours. Heavily reverbed, strange notes enter the piece, sounding like an intrusion from somewhere unknown. On the second piece it starts like the chattering of nature after the storm, almost imperciptable noises and notes hang in the air. Again the sound opens out slowly, notes arching across the music like something disturbing moving around in a distant cave. The only thing more subtly macabre than the music is what your imagination projects sits at the edge of the piece trying to find it's way in...

Martin Welham of classic psychedelic folk band Forest is back with his son, Tom,  as The Story. As this band they play a delightful acoustic folk music with a creepy psychedelic air and arcane lyrics. On 'The Wicker Man' they are the first perhaps to really get inside the songs of the film, creating something new and authentic that is not twee or trite. Indeed this is no simple pagan folk music, it's more primal than that, it's the work of a master. Their music will come out later during 2005 on two releases that will be truly essential. You sit listening and thinking, I had always hoped for this music, somehow I knew it would come someday. It is similar to and contemporary with our opening artist, The Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree, a new folk music that connects directly to imagined secret villages . We have guitars, flutes, churning background instruments, stunning harmony vocals and lyrics that evoke nature and the sinister Victorian stories of Arthur Machen's journies to find the lost forest dwellars that were not quite people. "We took the path to the shadow land, this is your home until you understand". Welcome back Martin, don't go away again... we need you to lead us back home.

...the little ones wiped the meat from their mouths and celebrated the preservation of the forest, the white eyed people were not welcome here. Distant calls from the pit outside the village forgotten as they grew weak. The yellow eyed children started the exhilerating dance around their life tree, the twin moons shining down upon them once more.
 

Standing alone looking out to sea  (late April 2005)

On their new limited E.P. The Kitchen Cynics make playful folk music that is by turns uplifting, mysterious, psychedelic and always beguiling. 'Sparrow Scratch Board' evokes blissful childhood holidays bird watching, memories only just remembered. 'The Big Parade' is blissful and drifting whilst 'Me and St George' is like the second Clive's Original Band album mixing middle eastern arrangements and melodies with British folk song. 'Where is My Wife?' moves from questioning introspective verse to soaring chorus with fuzzed electric guitar solos and lyrics about 'hearing the beating of your wings'. 'Dinner for Three (including the dog)' is a mystery, a mini-drama in song set in a kitchen. A great EP and one that I will return to often, especially for those songs which seem to evoke long summers of my youth and childhood that was soon to be lost.

Places that never were and will be again....

Just because these places do not exist, does not mean they are not real....

...like a hymn Plural 002 from Andy Jarvis and Ben Reynolds quietly play calming church organ as, tiny bells move in the wind. Finding a place for contemplation in a world demanding too much attention. Ben's acoustic guitar circles around, sighing cello, drifting Sunday afternoon. Then we have koto and ghostly drones, flutes and reeds. This is music inspired but not bound by a diversity of roots. Experimental acoustic music that follows many routes. Under the stones, stately, a female vocal appears unexpected and gentle. At the heart of this music is an ache, a longing for release to follow their own path. This is calm music but not at rest, the overlapping guitar layers of 'He is and which is both', the flute leading with a slow refrain. The productivity of artists can be overwhelming but each release from these artists offers its own devotion.

Agitated Radio Pilot are part of the Irish informal Deserted Village collective and make music that feels like solitude, stood alone in marshes or on moors, barren land out to the horizon. On 'Imaginary East of Longford' every note matters, composing the pauses as much as the music. Music such as this sits outside genres, it is acoustic guitar intimately recorded and layered but like so many releases by such artists is more a personal exploration. On 'What the winds and days may bring' we have the dangers in the landscape before the sanctified drone of 'And Many a Summer Sleeps'. The hymn, our childhood memories of wavering church organs used as statement of respite.

A feeling of warm enclosure into the pink skies of autumn dusk settle in The Golden Oaks 'Autumn Testament'. A perfect blend of folk inspired guitar, sighing atmospheres and almost heard sung voices. Birdsong calls across the field, soon it will be nightfall but for now the slowly fading warmth of a dying sun is enough. Shadows lengthening across the grass, the breeze in the trees driving all thoughts of tomorrow from your mind. The music is distant, suspended, ignorable yet entrancing. Soon it will be winter but for now the rabbits playing at the field's edge are all that matters. A smile of delerious joy and exhileration finds its way to your face, 'Arisel Arisel' in the background. It will be okay, she'll stay and all will be okay. As the sun slips away and the night arrives, a chill on your skin, the feeling of welcome withdrawn and of nature's time, 'hushed by bells'. Walking home as darkness arrives, the grey last post of twilight. In the distance, the lights of the house await and she will be there, she has to still be there, a fog has lifted. One of the best of this generation, you simply must visit them.

Aekie sounds more unknown, strings plucked and scrape around central electronic signals. Here we are walking through new landscapes, a folk music from places undiscovered. There are people here, voices that do not share our culture, in rituals unseen are part of the music. Music such as this creates unspoiled places in our world, only discovered through these mini three inch CDrs. We have music that is familiar and worrying, 'Alone' in their villages, part of their customs. Our cities have no use for them. It is not these imagined people's who are a threat to use, but our need for conformity that wipes out these almost possible places.

After spending time alone and in the imagined villages of people we cannot know, we enter a more hostile place in The Wooden Cupboard's 'Boiling the Animal in the sky'. Music of dead animal spirits seeping into our world, howls and calls. The music cuts out, reappears, confuses, seems to be faulty and then confronts again. Listen but do not disturb them. Is it meant to be like this, silence then noise, silence then clattering....for whom would this make sense? On part 2 we move from howls to rage, the primal expression, the monkeys taking over the asylum, chattering, insane. Be afraid, you are their host, by listening you give them breath.

From frenzied confrontation to the ceremony in an underground chamber of the Davenport related Seen Through. Searing, slow electric guitar reverberates around the cave, filling every cavity of the rock and your skull. A slow invocation to primative instinct, music from past lives, prayers of the stone age. The ceremony reaches its peak, the roar of primal existence on part two. Almost screaming, tearing at your skull, the grinding of the circle stones. Here be the pronunciation of savage gods that we have lost that wait to reclaim us. Noise mangles all perception, reason and rationale denied with only the droning strings left that seep into every cell of the cave walls. They come not to invoke gods, but to become them.

Kukkiva Poliis from Finland on a live CD recorded in Tampere go further back, to the simple movements and grace, to bells and percussion, to the sound of rocks, to the murk of the marshes. Then when this is too much, they let our a frenzy of hitting, clattering, pulling chaos. Somewhere is their order but demented dark ages fairground music is only lessened by the delightfully surreal flute clearings. This is the edge of sleep and awake, when the brain stops repressing the thoughts, when the bird men arrive. Bells and birdsong as cacophony, as symphony to the frenetic mind. The cruelty of children, pulling off the wings of angels but smiling up innocently and saying 'it wasn't me father' as they wipe the yellow blood of the holy across their smirking face.

Kuupuu 'I can walk the dark' from the early hours, walking through the forest, treading carefully and listening to the conversations of the animals. They watch you slowly walking, disturbing their time. At the edges this suspense filled, before the moment of violence music sits in front of you out of reach. Melodies scuplted from mist, the grey air as ethereal chords that evaporate with the dawn. If you clap your hands, you won't awake. The only way if past those yellow eyes that sit out of sight in the trees, watching you, waiting for their moment. Don't stray from the path.... don't ever look back at the black shapes which contort in the undergrowth. The infernal people, the overlooked, the abominations that dwell here, their whispers, their twisted songs calling you back.

On 'Cardinals Bound For Heaven' The North Sea's recent music reaches a possible destination, from existence to the non-physical. Their music here barely exists, it's shimmering atmosphere describe a blissful state of transendence. We emerge out of the darkness to the state of pure light, a nirvana of sound. The blinding white light covers all, merges with it and becomes one. Instruments do not matter in this place of musical energy. But on 'welcome to the pearly gates little bird' we are earth bound again, the sounds of water, wind and birds bringing us back. The possibility for achievement is offered here. Somehow appropriately on final track 'Sweetness' we have the return of the quiet church organ, a thread that seems to connect these musics.

Sat in the empty pews, silent, alone, only the sweet child memories of the air upon reeds, of melody carved from the oxygen. We end as we started, innocent, hopeful, in solitude . The hand of the infant reaching out to the warm grasp of an aged adult soon to ascend. We have visited places that never were and through our listening shall be again....

Flying with the kestrels...

Clay Ruby's Davenport from the USA on recent CDr 'Springtime on Saturnalia' were more pastoral than I had expected, field recordings introduce tentative plucked, middle eastern sounding acoustic guitar played over birdsong which evolves into a full raga of intense power with sitar, violin and many sounds swirling in the continually building epic track. Not at all what I expected and very beautiful.

The Davenport associated Jesus Balls on 'Yellow' were somewhat more stark, a grey noise, feedback, circuits malfunctioning based series of drones into which tiny, trace elements of melody are added. It's hard to know what I'm supposed to make of it. It did though clear my head, perhaps that's what it's for.
 

I'm also listening to a lot of the UK First Person label and tonight it's their Sculptress CDr which is a sustained, hushed instrumental that has mournful lead clarinet supported by restrained guitars. It seems to be aligned to the introspective melodies of such as United Bible Studies who we have written about before. The shimmering, slowly altering tones of the guitars are highly effective giving an exploratory air but one that is controlled and has some highly unique sounds. The melodies played out on guitar remind of the late 60s free-folk improvisations behind Tim Buckley, organic, warm and natural. Electronic layers sit above the piece, like clouds rolling by as the music slowly becomes more intense, like the twist in a film taking us from the serene to inescapable dream state. More to come from us about First Person in future entries.

From here we move to Finland with The Puke Eaters, a low-fi broken incarnation from the members of almost legendary band Kemialliset Ystavat on 'God Is Free'. This is truly scary music. Ominous rumbles, creaks, chains rattles, melodies seem doom filled, voices if voices they are call to dark fate, seeming to come from beyond, calling out like trapped, haunted souls. Pretty melodies drift over scuzz rock, noises pulsing, music for horror films they dare not make. There appears to be some kind of disturbing rationale, a sense of minds operating only to their own derranged impulses, chaotic, unreasoned and free.

If this feeling of losing control is true on that release on Lampukkello it becomes confrontation, this is noise reconstructed as agitation, the incessant digital chattering taken into the realms of aural abuse. Why was it made? What is it for? The only answers can be found in delerious submission. Your brain will hurt, toy voices, machines, clattering all looped, layered and lovingly carved into every inch of your brain until you scream for respite.

Eloine on 'Short Community' offer a more becalmed respite, the flowing water, the gently played musical percussion, the suspended guitar notes and vibrant jews harp. Like attendance at a ceremony you don't understand but are happy to observe, it interests and fades from you at the same time. But this is not just soundwash, there is an element between the notes, not allowing release but probing, you make be still but that doesn't mean you shouldn't think. If Davenport's release sits somewhere between India and Afghanistan and The Puke Eaters or Lampukkello are the sounds of slowly encroaching madness then Eloine is the remote parts of Nepal, untouchable, barely seen, beautiful to visit but impossible to stay. There is a calm sense of purpose here, but one you have to find yourself.

Some of the more interesting releases from the Jewelled Antler collective are the hardly noticed ones that seem to slip out quietly. The Buried Civilisations is one such release on 'Tunnels to other chambers'. For me the Jewelled Antler artists have represented mystery, a journey to know and hear. It's therefore appropriate that on this release they document their own aural journey. These small, exploratory improvised pieces bring out their best, their origins. On this they seem to tap into the spirit of bones in caves, the meanings of writing on the stone walls. A sense of the truly ancient, something simple and at the root of music. The whole CDr is only about 25 minutes long but imparts more than most albums, this feels like a group connecting, playing outdoors, the air moving through the instruments.

There is a similar element to the music they make as Once and Future Herds on 'Lion Coloured Hills'. The music taps into a sensation of people long gone, the unseen peoples, the hill tribes, the nomads. This is acoustic informal ritual, simple, still and invoking what has gone. Music for pre-civilisations, for emerging communities, for the gathers, hunters and farmers we all once were.

Finally our journey takes us to Xenis Emputae Travelling Band and 'New Etheric Muse', slowly forming landscapes of sound, the drift of glacier forming valley. Here we move before the humans, concerned with the basic elements of life. Force of nature carving out the foundations for existence. At their heart is the original folk music, the Iron Age melodies, the pipes and strings of firemakers. Instrumentals of subsonic, layer movement and breeze drifting music. Here the music marks the maps, it is the writing, story and the tradition. The dark lost ages, Lyke Wake Dirge moving from lullaby to out of focus memory. Eating the mushrooms to take us high above the plains, one with the kestrels, only trees as far as the eye can see, trees and fire, stone and iron. It's there still, waiting, deep for us to find in the blood.

A map to the past market invisibly on the skin that wraps our bones. The bones that Buried Civilsations found in the tunnels to other chambers.

Fading sun over twilight meadows...

walking with headphones on across a meadow this evening, the sun setting with Spring warmth rapidly fading, quiet all around as darkness draws in.

Listening recently to the Australian SightSoundCollective which is driven by Michael Donnelly with his 'MusicYourMindWillLoveYou' imprint. In the post arrived the most stunning package, CDs with collage covers, 50s business men with antlers, composers with three eyes, the ordinary subverted into the strange. We have spoken a little of Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood before and the new 'Lucifer's Bride' album but here we have the album before this 'Animal Speak'. This is astonishing music, marshalling elemental forces and keeping them barely in control, walking the line between chaos and mercurial power. Children's voices whirl in a maelstrom of guitars and unknown sounds, soaring eletrical energy, the nagging pulse of simple acoustic folk at the heart. Moving towards a revelation, a place of gnostic knowledge, by the end those existing in the intangible realms will be your guide.

Then it is onto Terracid, part of the collective with their new 'The Evacuation of Earth' (which has a fantastic hand oil painted cover which smells sublime). Here we explore the onminous, music suspended in anticipation, the threat of violence. It sounds like Can collaborating with Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine produced by King Tubby, the concept of 'dread' taking on literal form. Supple bass and drums drive needle sharp, ever circling atmospheres, never allowing relief. This is the soundtrack to our looking at the sky, pointing at the beautiful orange glows we know are our fate, mesmerised and terrified, the promise of the end....

On their sampler 'Sound Surrounds Us', they stake a quiet claim as the foremost experimental collective. Something curious, unsettling and seductive is happening in Australia. This is not just improvised noise, this is the harnessing of music into a physical force. The world awaits.

Carrying forward ever deeper into the experimental we come to the pineal gland ripping music of The Wooden Cupboard on 'Animals Speak The Spirit Tongue'. Almost beyond music into a howl at the night sky, the music wolves would make. From the worryingly quiet chimes to the terrifyingly intense calls, this unbroken music comes together into surges of crescendo. This is the sound of nature rebelling, calling out to their ancestors to reclaim the ground. Here we have a music that seems unhuman, more beast than man. Animal calls to the moon that put a chill in the heart of every person walking back home across the fields.

Brad Rose's The North Sea are highly prolific and now we have two more releases 'Council of Trees' and 'Autumn Birch'. Slowly Brad appears to be moving beyond music itself and into the world of natural sound, at times close to Luc Ferrari and Bernard Parmegiani, communing at the miscropic level. It's like he never wants to come back to the city, content to merge with the fauna, the fungi, the trees. 'Green Folliage Forever' he titles his tracks, his journey is like a spiritual journey, his music almost impercepitble hymns. Even here though the ominous sits in the air, ever present though quiet. The natural places do not exist for our amusement, if we want to stay we must become part of the process of growth and decay.

Evolving out of this toward contemplative but beautiful stasis is United Bible Studies on 'Stations of the Sun, Transits of the Moon', a deleted but still available understated classic of respite and reflection. Almost difficult to listen to in it's fragility, music that will evaporate if touched, harp, guitar, distance, poise. Connecting to artists like Ramses III, if The Wooden Cupboard and Terracid are the torrential outpouring, this is the moments sat by a window looking at the rain on a Thursday Afternoon.... Everybody needs this, music for memories, simple, calming and more tha merely pretty, restraint as a purpose.

Alasdair Roberts, formerly of Appendix Out has a new album 'No Earthly Man' out where he interprests UK folk songs produced by Paul Oldham, creating a simple music that blends various Western folk musics. When it allows itself to move beyond the simple acoustic into a more direct, powerful touch on 'A Lyke Wyke Dirge' something contemporaneously ancient and modern is formed, the mercurial we talked about reshaped. Sometimes he sounds almost scared of letting this power out for fear of it becoming untamed.

He knows the Owl Men he depicts on his album's cover hover yet in the trees waiting their moment... For this will be the moment we started this with, the moment when the fading Spring sun disappears under the meadow and the shadows from the trees lengthen once more for the Owl Man's unhuman calls to come again. Listen hard to their fluttering wings waiting in anticipation.

Coffin lids in marsh lands...

Screaming, using lung fulls of precious air, fingers worn against the stiff wood of the coffin lid.... Tonight our listening takes us for the moment into the silent scream against the bleak and mundane.... Funeral Folk are an underground collective, emerging to hushed whispers of reverence. Darkly seething feedback folk, noise as poison, acoustic guitars as infection.  For those prepared check them out at http://www.funeralfolk.tk

Also in the either of forest folk, experimental broken acoustic, arcane primativism, tribal rituals and deeply psychedelic fragments of fried song we recommend the new double CD 'ruskeatimantti' from Finnish band Avarus of their early music. This is music as primal journey, leaving behind the city for the lush undergrowth and rough thorns of the darker parts of the woods.

Moving towards the flatlands Brian Eno's 1970s/early 80s lost soundpieces, unreleased until now on 'More Music For Films' brings together disperate elements, landscapes, queasy jazz, pulsing transmissions, slow movements of the aching hills, barbed fourth world musics of invented countries. This connects quickly to the hinterlands of music, exploring the landscapes only existing in the musicians heads, transient and fleeting. From 'Violence Beyond The Snowline', 'Avarus', 'Hush Arbors' or 'Clay Pipe' the experimental has audio touch points here. It isn't folk, sometimes it isn't even music... but it's entwined, pushing hooks into the marshes and reclaiming them as their own.

Reconnecting with this land's arcana...

Our new friends Askr have just made their new demo available online for all. They are a great, emerging band who we are proud to support. Download it now from http://www.askr.org/Demo/index.html

We have an advance of the Circulus album 'the lick on the tip of an envelope yet to be sent' and it's stunning, like a mixture of early 1970s folk-rock combined with prog-rock moog synths. It's great, like Fairport Convention and ELP in a forest. I encourage everyone to look out for this, they are the genuine package of musicians really committed to a style (visually too).

Dragonfly too have sent me their albums and they achieve the impossible, combining folk music with world music influences without it sounding twee and bland in that 80s new age way. New album 'The Ridgeway' comes especially recommended, they are amazingly talented musicians and almost seem a southern British comparison to Malinky in the north. There is a deep Celtic heart to the music, but one that promotes musicial inclusion of complementary styles. Their live reputation precedes them, but this music brings together an organic roots music that isn't scared to incorporate aspects of folklore, community and adventure.

Our friends Tuung are about to tour, they bring together glitchy electronica and psychedelic folk music properly for almost the first time. They really do merit your exploration at http://www.tunng.co.uk

Those highly interesting and often strange people Sedayne have been in touch. They say "check out http://www.sedayne.co.uk/citera.html for the latest addition to the instrumentarium - this instrument has reinvigorated my whole relationship with traditional song to such an extent I'm now fielding 50/50 sung & spoken material in terms of 'storytelling' performance - my storytelling page is at http://www.sedayne.co.uk/storytelling.html "

Lots of listening to Daniel Patrick Quinn's very delicate acoustic folk song with highly evocative folklore and locational themes. He also releases ambient soundscapes of some intensity by Dac Crowell too. Check out his site at http://www.suilvenrecordings.com

These qualities are shared with Simon Lewis as The Phoenix Cube on 'The Tyranny of Birdsong', embracing the song, delicacy, quiet as space to breathe. Folk as respite, a mindset as well as a music, connecting back to land and people at http://phoenixcube.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

Next we come to Snowmachine's 'in a light...' where broken electronics meet fragile melodies, soft touches and folky drifitng amospheres blend with surging beds of noise. Jamie Stephenson as Violence Beyond The Snowline takes this further yet on 'Skin Maps', taking the music back to an imagined future, where buzzes and whirrs form symphones, where synapses trigger arpeggios. This is the sound of 50s radar or hand dial radio, mysterious, misunderstood, full of ghost images, order slowly emerging from static....voices almost reaching comprehension from an ether not explored. See http://www.snowline.blogspot.com/

On 'Noctures', Team Discovery Channel seem to be particularly obscure, hardly anyone I talk with has heard of them but their arcane land acoustic instrumentals, like a slow-fi Penguin Cafe Orchestra composing in a cafe takes them close to Uton, Peter Wright, North Sea, Buried Civilisations and Once & Future Herds. This is music I don't think we have developed a mature language for yet, sitting somewhere between Brian Eno's 'On Land' (a quietly pivotal work for this music) and David Tudor's processed electronic forests.

Celebrate the quiet clearings that sit in the forest.

Mandrake, Scream thy first scream

We have mentioned The Eighteenth Day Of May before and they have now sent a sample CD of their delightful music, they really do bring together folk with the psychedelic, almost feeling like a lost forest settlement than a group. They exist seemingly cut-off, individual and pure in sound. Their CD which is untitled but we've named 'Pulling The Mandrake Root' is great, songs like 'Flowers of the Forest' or 'Dawn' go far beyond the twee and into sweetly innocent dark fringes of the clearing.... The last track is untitled, backwards folk music, psychedelic, twisted.....wyrd. The Mandrake Screams....

Next we explore the world of Deserted Village, the subtle, intoxicating waft of musical deadly nightshade lulling you into them. Hailing from Ireland, helping to bring forward the curious and doomed romantic into the music. Folk music from Holt, the broken acoustica of 'The Cosmic Nanou', the rumbling emanations of 'The North Sea' and 'Peter Wright', the rainy afternoon miniature chamber-tragedy of 'Another Window' and the never reached distant dream of 'Snowmachine', delicate, quietly desparate, always yearning for never felt contact.... All combining the experimental edge to a deep musical feeling. Not always folk, always returning towards it, the soft heart in a warrior's chest coming home.
 

Lau Nua from Finland, the singer with Avarus and other Finnish wyrd folk/rock bands has her own solo album which is slightly similar to that by Islaja but is if anything even more internalised. This often sounds like the album Talk Talk never made after Laughing Stock, as their structures broken down into moments of beauty surrounded by fragmented explorations. Being in Finnish it sounds all the more evocative of course.... often it reminds of Elyse's version of 'Deed I Do, with stringed instruments played to sound like zithers or sitars, strings scraped, ancient... you've got to hear it. Music for lonesome sheep herders.

Then we're into distinctly darker territory with The Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood. They are from Australia and part of a rapidly emerging informal collective. It's beyond unsettling actually into the deeply disturbing, sweet but like descending from dream state into nightmare.....having got a bit jaded earlier in the week this was like hearing early something completely new and personalised for the first time, enthralling, bewildering but enticing and curious. It's ear cleansing and revitalising though starkly abrasive....definitely starting from folk but woven into knots of circular musical power.....can dark, arcane, black, pagan, magickal folk be revitalising?

It's really bloody creepy at times, like watching Suspiria, early Mario Bava or Barbara Steele films.... the books of Blackwood or Machen.....you kind of feel there's a layer beyond that you're not quite reaching and not sure if you want to....See http://www.digitalisindustries.com Anyway, back in a minute, I must go, the witchfinder is at the door.....

Moving away from the darkness but staying with Digitalis in the spring fields of our youth is the unbearably lovely The Cone Bearers on 'Dew Drops for grass blades'. With their customary beautiful tactile packaging hinting at the contents we have music of wind wafting gently, seeds from dandelions floating in the air, a babbling brook and the ambience of Harold Budd taken through gentle chimes and musical ripples into a music of nature.... of half remembered idealised memory. This evokes a powerful emotional response, calling back your past, connecting back to those lost.

Brad Rose continues on the separate Corscican Paintbrush which if the preceding work was gently unbearable is painfully fragile, as though the process of making the music itself reveals too much. This is simple music, evolving like painting through brushstrokes, the formless picture emerging from the smaller layers. More acoustic than some of Brad's work, this evokes folk music and is structured but is like songs emerging at twilight round a fire, taking us to our sleep.

The North Sea return on Locust Grove with a more plaintive, lonely sound, you are the only person in this grove, rain spattering through the trees, a long walk home and the sun setting....

They make music not because they want to, but because they must....

 

The EFDSS are having a tribute day to traditional singer Bob Copper who has now passed away. It's got a moutwatering line up, details at the site. In reality there originally wasn't even 'folk' music, it is a popularisation (some would say vulgarisation) of the traditional songs played on instruments accessible in the modern age. What do I mean by this? Well before the 1950s in the UK acoustic guitars were not generally available and certainly they were not an accepted instrument. There wasn't a folk music, it wasn't until the late 50s that the combination of traditional song, Morris music, folk music and popular song came together really and it didn't explode in the UK until the early 60s. I always find it amazing how even then in the early 60s the folk music, Mod, R&B, trad jazz, modern jazz and rock 'n' rollers could have scenes operating alongside each other but rarely crossing over. That's what is fascinating about Donovan for example who he could be down at the front seeing The Who as The High Numbers in 1964, playing support as a folk musician to R&B bands and mixing with Mick Softly, Bert Jansch in the folk clubs.

The advent of blues singers (especially Big Bill Broonzy) coming to the UK playing acoustic, the emergent rock and roll and especially skiffle created this becoming the instrument of choice for the young. This was then adapted to play backing for traditional songs and effectively folk music was born. Before then the primary instrumentation was reed based accordions, small reed organs etc. I recently read some old Bob Copper where he said of the young Shirley Collins 'she wanted to go down the folk road whereas we wanted to stay traditional'. So at that pivotal time the traditional singers saw themselves removed from the evolution of the form into folk music. How far things have evolved since then when people can make 'laptop folk'.

Andrew King's second album is an interesting mixture of the traditional song, sung in the old style with passion and drama set to reed and electronic drone backing. It's highly successful but stark stuff, often bringing out the dark story telling of these songs. It's called 'The Amorfatus Wound' and is highly recommended. It was more known around the C93/World Serpent fans than it was in wyrd folk circles, but for the adventurous it's wonderful. It's not a casual listen, indeed it demands your full attention but at it's full power on the terrifying 'Cruel Lincoln' or 'The Knight Templar's Dream' you won't hear anything more evocative and enthralling.

I'm sat meanwhile listening to British wyrd folk band Tunng and their new album (links at the site). It's a stunning combination of simple acoustic folk song and digital sound processing. When the folk song vocal glitches and loops to fade into whirring noise on track two it's as shocking in this context as first hearing Tortoise's first album in Nottingham's Selectadisc many, many years ago. I heard this jazzy prog rock starting catching and looping as CDs do too frequently thinking 'bloody hell, CDs eh?' when suddenly I became aware 'it's meant to be like this'...... and the scales fell from my eyes.

Tunng are like Fennesz, Oval, Microstoria, Pole, Basic Channel etc producing Heron or Tir Na Nog. It's far more succesful than the preceding WigWam band from the UK as it avoids gimmickry and focusses on the songs. This is subtly radical though, it is an evolution, it will scare traditionalists but it is traditional. Interestingly I don't think it is, but with a guitar and laptop one person could do all this, but there's a communal feeling here, a sharing of something that you can't fake. (note if you have never heard Microstoria go and buy, the music of the womb delivered via laptop). There is a lovely use of spoken word samples in Tunng that add a story telling aspect to the songs.

Listening to Tanakh last night for the 'edge of wyrd folk' epic article.... odd how they moved from doomy acoustic folk balladry to 'out there' experimental soundscapes on their last double album. But yet.... sitting and listening to it, it's amongst the best of the form, it has a structured quality (if that makes sense). It has space at it's heart, empty space. I mean this in a good way, in this regard it is very similar (sonically too in parts) to Pink Floyd's 'Live at Pompei' or even the shifting desert ambient of Steve Roach or especially the more acoustic recent releases of Robert Rich.

Listening to recent David Sylvian last night especially the remixes of his new album called 'Good Son vs Only Daughter' (I think). There is an emerging folkish quality to his music. If you can check out the wonderful remix of 'The Heart Knows Better'. Don't look back at his Japan origins, listen with open ears.

A package of Andy Jarvis related stuff arrived today complementing the Ben Reynolds (sometime partner of Andy) music from last week. We have been discussing music classification and how it both helps and hinders appreciation of the actual works. I've settled on 'experimental acoustic' as a term Andy and others seem comfortable with. Their First Person CDr series is wonderful - links at the site and listings too under Latest News.

Today's latest and excellent contacts are UK band Pinkie Maclure, a wyrd folk band I have moved quickly to include in the site and look forward to hearing this week. I recommend investigating yourself at http://www.pinkiemaclure.co.uk . I'm delighted to be contacted by new artists, please do promote our initiative around British wyrd folk but also beyond the borders - we cover all countries and associated musics.

A lot of Finnish music sounds almost unreachable to me in a good way. The language is so different, the sounds distant, music drifts amongst soft white noise, voices in the ether, songs start and fragment, distorted bird song wafts through the air, keyboards start, stop and circle in on themselves. It feels like it is beamed from somewhere I can't know or quite grasp, a land I'll never see.

I love this as it connects as music but also offers space for the listener. If it was in English I'm sure it wouldn't have the same impact. The more I hear of this, the more it seems a product of its place, the slight remoteness from Western Europe, the cultural sense of identity, Russia close to the East, the Artic ever present. It achieves a sort of imaginary landscape that a lot of musicians are searching for, to open their own mental space outside the physical cities. This could be the freeform folk rituals of Davenport and Clay Figure, the sense of quiet undisturbed places by Eloine and Vaapaa, the seemingly demented media-in-a-forest scrambling of Lamppukkello, the soft breeze in a field of Hush Arbours or the arcane landscape music of North Sea and Xenis Emputae Travelling Band. Each seems to me on a quest to creat their own imaginary landscape

Receive the new Monster Movie CD 'Transitor' this morning, it is excellent acoustic indie dream-pop with folk touches. This doesn't seem to capture it though, it's not a slavish clone of the latest Coldplay/Keane type band. Instead it's closer to variously like It's Jo and Danny, Mazzy Star, Slowdive, Cowboy Junkies, A R Kane, Galaxie 500, MBV, Joy Zipper, that type of band and nicely done. A couple of tracks reach closer to British wyrd folk which adds diversity to their sound. The further out they go, incorporating seering electric guitar into almost soundscapes, the stronger they seem. Most enjoyable

My love of the new Rameses III album 'Parsimonia' grows.... like Brian Eno circa Discreet Music collaborating with John Renbourn and Bill Nelson (the guitar playing moves between acoustic and drifting electric lead). It's the sense of melody, of natural sounds incorporated and music being suspended in the air that is so beautiful. It links into Explosions In The Sky and A Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra too with the soundscapes element. See http://www.ramesesiii.com