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

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.

Musicking

The Institute of Stone Age Sex held their second public session on Friday at the Temple Works‘ Why Rush? festival. Here are some photos. Perhaps some selected musical highlights will follow. Meanwhile, here are some selected images taken by Simon Cliff:

Holbeck Manifest!

Tomorrow, Friday the 11th, at 6:30pm:

The Institute of Stone Age Sex

Deliver a session of ritual rural arcana here:

“Scowan urla grun!”

More information here!

IAO IOSAS!

My new group, The Institute of Stone Age Sex (IOSAS), is playing on the 11th of May at the Temple Works’ Why Rush? festival. I think we might also be lined up to do a ritual vowel singing workshop.

I’m very pleased with how the sound of IOSAS is developing. After the ‘communal psych’ seven-piece lineup that we started with, things are now solidifying around a quartet of myself (vox/accordion/wind instruments), Layla Smith (vox/harmonium) and dual cellos from Simon Bradley and Briony Yorke. In the interests of documentary, there are a few brief excerpts from a recent rehearsal below. A couple of compilation appearances are lined up for the very near future!

One of the pieces we’ve been working on is a version of O! What do ye Wesh i’ the Beck?, a Yorkshire dialect poem by George Cowling. A version of this song also appeared on the XETB lp The Pyrognomic Glass, at the end of side A (entitled Abital). Layla also discovered the poem independently and sang her own version accompanied by Briony to the bones of Mary Bateman at the Thackray Museum.