Here's some music for the season as realised by Sedayne & Eleanor's Visceral Tomb 23-25th December 2010 in celebration of the Primal Dark Heart of Winter; freely gifted until January 1st 2011. Two levels of inspiration here - the first is the Medieval Feast of Ass (Asinaria Festa) in which clerics inverted the sacred scheme by way of Ritual Reversal in a veneration of general Misrule, and the second is Eddie Waring, the 15-minute Help Yourself classic from the legendary Christmas at the Patti album as realised by The Manband & Friends at The Patti Pavilion, Swansea, on 19 December 1972.
Rapunzel & Sedayne (aka Venereum Arvum) ~ Purveyors of Songs & Ballads from the English Popular Tradition ~ Rachel McCarron : singing, electric & acoustic guitars & frame-drum
Sean Breadin : singing, kemence, citera, crwth & drones**
We recorded these in the Barley Temple on 1st & 6th December 2010 by way of rehearsal sessions for our gig in Sheffield Robber's Dog Folk Cub on the 11th. So, four songs as two medleys :
The Owld Grye Song (Poor Old Horse)- from the singing of Jim Eldon, as collected at the Appleby Horse Fair. We were singing this together before we ever spoke to each other, so it carries a special charge for us- the very cornerstone of our repertoire these past 11 years and still yielding fresh fruits each time we do it; always different always the same. Harp Song of the Dane Women - Peter Bellamy's setting of the Rudyard Kipling poem which we recorded for the forthcoming The Oak Ash & Thorn Project CD on Folk Police Recordings though we've elvolved it a good deal since, largely on account of ongoing harmonium problems, necessitating that Rachel use her new guitar which gives it a very different feel.
The Gower Wassail - which is well known, finding its way into the revival from the singing of the legendary Phil Tanner, aka The Gower Nightingale; we've tried to go for the traditional al-di choruses, but the revival fol-di creeps in there too - all part of the Folk Process no doubt. Robin Redbreast's Testament - this is less well known, existing in various versions (a fine one is to be found in The Faber Book of Popular Verse which no bookshelf should be without) ; what the source is here I couldn't say although the version here is somewhat edited*. The melodic setting is Rapunzel's and the arrangement fluid enough that it never comes out the same way twice. The instrumental dance interludes are improvised according to the rhymthic modality of the songs; and whilst the crwth is a Northern European bowed-lyre associated with Wales, we're not making any claims to traditional Welshness in using it on The Gower Wassail.
Sedayne, Bill Leader & Rapunzel, Woodbine & Ivy Session, Fairfield Studio, 27th November 2010
* For a complete rendering of this song, check out our albumA Pentacle of Pips(2009) available as a download from Folk Police Recordings, and on CD-R from Reverb Worship. Another version features on our forthcoming Folk Police album Songs from the Barley Temple.
** The drones here are an electronic shruti box and a Korg Kaossilator heard ambiently with respect of the music; all was realised in real time, such as the random twittering towards the end using setting S71 on the Kaossilator.
Sheffield, 11th December
*
And whilst we're on here's last year's version of Gower Wassail with the visuals:
and Sedayne's solo rendering of Harp Song from a couple of years ago:
The eagle-eyed will have spotted Dedicated to the Stones & Trees of the Small Palace inscribed on the play-out groove of the Masstishaddhu Shekinah album released on United Dairies in 1988. Less difficult to spot is the same dedication on Dr Pagan Pond's cover design of the Psychedelic Pig CD re-issue of 2000, where it features with a satisfying prominence respectful of the source which inspired the Masstishaddhu seance one freezing night in winter of 1987 in a Mithraeum on the north bank of the River Tyne.
Some six years earlier, in the January of 1981, two of the Masstishaddhu musicians took part in another seance which resulted in The Stones & Trees of the Small Palace released thereafter in a cassette-only edition, all copies of which were feared lost in the mists of time or otherwise absorbed back into the ancestral mold from which they sprung. However, we are delighted to report one copy has lately come to light, and in celebration of its 30th anniversary an MP3 edition has been realised has been uploaded for free access. No attempt has been made to clean up or otherwise enhance this hoary artefact other than to attend to a couple of dodgy edits on the original master; all is heard in its original lo-fi glory.
The line-up for the session was given the name Gathering Cries (after the gathering cries of the Northumbrian clans as given in The Denham Tracts of Northumbrian folklore in 1892) and features a basic trio of B. Sedayne (flutes / hand drum / hummel / voice / musical direction), M. Watson (cello / flutes / voice) & P. Howe (gongs / bells) with contributions from S. Smith (voice on Part Three) and T. Breadin (guitar on Part Seven).
The music comprises a sequence of ten tracks reflecting the influence of free improvisation, folk & medieval musics after the fashion of the Third Ear Band which remains the closest comparison. Using hand-made bamboo flutes, ethnic percussion, antique Scandinavian zither and 'cello, they range from bleak atonal dronescapes to spirited modal dances, taking a notion of the folk aesthetic without referencing any folk material per se. This not music of revival, but of renewal in its most vivid sense; all the music is improvised, organic & spontaneous, though within the overall musical vision of the MD of which Stones and Trees respresents the first steps in a 30-year musical journey.
The Stones & Trees of the Small Palace - January 1981
