The Turning Year

From the Shepheard’s Kalender (1656)

Before we say goodbye to MMXII, here are a few bits and pieces that have escaped the blog, but have been circulated on my Twitter and Facebook pages.

First, I was very pleased that both Warren Ellis and John Coulthart had some nice things to say about my music, which gives me reason to start 2013 and the final preparations for Angelystor with a spring in my step! Also, the Leila Waddell material seems to have been phenomenally popular, thanks to everyone who has stopped by this humble blog!

Over Christmas I added a couple of miscellaneous bits to the Soundcloud account, which I hope to use more often (as well as mirroring the XETB archive on Bandcamp when I get time).

First up was an unreleased XETB track based around a banjo improvisation in the Dorian mode, which Ficino associated with the sun, Apollo and “simple, reverential and earnest” music. Personally I decided it was a bit too aimless and full of fluffed notes to make it onto a release, but I still think it has some charm! The title itself comes from Il Mondo Magico de Gli Heroi, an obscure work on alchemy, which includes a number of explanations of alchemical symbols such as the Sun and Moon based on extensions of their names. LUNA thus becomes LUx NAturae, SOL becomes Solum Omnium Lumen, and so on. Although I’ve yet to read it, I understand that Il Mondo Magico is a key element of Joscelyn Godwin and Guido Mina di Sospiro’s Forbidden Book.

The other new addition to the Soundcloud was a recording of my mother, singing at a local folk club back in 1971! This is one of my favourite songs, and one that I also often sing, although in a longer, and somewhat ‘bluer’ version!

Finally, if you missed it at the bottom of an earlier post, here’s a lo-fi recording of The Institute of Stone Age Sex doing part of their live thing.

Happy new year!

Phil

A Tone Testament

Leila Waddell is best known for being one of Aleister Crowley’s muses, although she was an incredibly talented artist in her own right as a musician, composer and author.

The score for her solo violin work, Thelema: A Tone Testament, was originally published in Crowley’s journal The Equinox, vol.1, no. 8 (Autumn 1912).I originally posted a digital realisation of this piece on my old blog in 2009, but held off releasing the newly typeset and edited version of the score. I’ve decided to make it public and it is available to browse or download on Issuu (- click the link to get it!).

A note if you decide to download and print the score: the score should start on the left-hand page. It could therefore be printed out onto either both sides, or two sheets, of A3. The fermata at the start of p.4 should allow time to turn. If I get time over the next few weeks I will add cover pages and so on to allow booklet printing.

If you don’t read music or play violin then you can still listen to my realisation of the score below!

King Orfeo and the Golden Moment

An old post from an old blog given new life…

In 2010 started learning folk songs more seriously, which rekindled my interest in the idea of the ‘golden moment’ in music.

Caterwauling at the Grove Folk Club, photo Layla Legard

I remember first hearing the ancient song King Orfeo sung on Alan Lomax’s Classic Ballads of Britain and Ireland, collected between 1949 and 1969. Click on foregoing link to listen to it: it is sung by John Stickie, an elderly man whose frail, thin voice would have had you believe he was a close relative of the Sibyl of Cumae.

Holbeck Audio Walk released!

Wow, it’s taken some time! First there were server and streaming issues, then a chronic lack of time as the first semester of teaching kicked in, but it’s here – the Holbeck Audio Walk app for Android! Click here to visit the Google Play store page!

This is the third prototype app using isolated elements of the LOAM plaform which I am currently developing. It uses the text and audio from Simon Bradley’s original 2010 Holbeck Audio Walk. This app only demonstrates what I call the the ‘guidance’ or ‘non-diegetic’ layer of LOAM. Embedded/diegetic layers have already been tested in the Almias app.

Due to continuing chronic time constraints I’ve not had a chance to do any comprehensive testing ‘in the field’. I’d appreciate it if any Leodensians/Loiners who might read this could download it (it’s a tiny 44kb file) and test it by going to the canal bridge on Wharf Approach and giving it a go!

Hail Be You!

A small notice about a new compilation being released by Cold Spring at the end of the year, and containing a new Xenis Emputae Travelling Band track. The track in question is an alternate mix of Elicona. This is the first part of the 15 minute Littlebeck Trisagion, which makes up the latter half of the Three Spirits release coming in early 2013 (- and not to be confused with a track also called Elicona on the Phreo Fram Norþdael mini cd that came with Psychogeographia Ruralis!) This is also the third volume of the Dark Britannica series originated by Mark Coyle, who used to run an excellent wyrd/psych folk website called The Unbroken Circle, back in more innocent times. I wish him well wherever he may be now.

Composing with Yew Spectres

A couple of weeks ago I began working on a piece of music using field recordings made by Layla at St. Digain’s churchyard, Llangernyw, Wales. This is the home of an incredibly ancient yew tree said to be 4,000 to 5,000 years old. The place has caught our imaginations, although unfortunately – due to commitments to my students – I was unable to visit with her. You can read about her Welsh adventure here.

Photo by Layla Legard.

LOAM: Locative Oral/Audio Media Overview

It’s been quiet on the blog, but insanely hectic away from it: it’s that time of the semester when all the marking comes in and has to be turned around in 3 weeks. Some staff illness has meant I’ve taken on a lot more than usual, but fortunately most of it is for a module that I love teaching (Creative Music Skills).

Meanwhile, here’s the overview for the LOAM locative media platform that Simon circulated on my behalf during his recent residency at Concordia University. Development on the platform (and the lingering final bug-trapping and launch of Holbeck Audio Walk) will hopefully be happening in a fortnight!

LOAM Overview & Call for Participation [pdf]