Our latest 2 disc CDr release by the Scottish psych/folk outfit Kitchen Cynics is now available for pre-order SOLD OUT. This two disc CDr set is Alan’s newest and arguably some of Alan’s best work to date. He wrote and recorded both discs over the winter of 2009/2010 specifically for this CDr series. We feel lucky and honored to be part of this wonderful collection of beautiful music.

For those who are not familiar with the Kitchen Cynics, you will find this to be a great introduction. The Kitchen Cynics (aka Alan Davidson) is a longstanding Folk/Psych practitioner from Aberdeen, Scotland. He has released more than 20 LPs, 7″s, cassettes and CDs since 1990 and has supported bands shared the stage with the likes of the Incredible String Band, Julian Cope, Terry Reid, Josephine Foster, PG Six, Major Matt Mason USA, Marissa Nadler, Black Forest/Black Sea, Thomas Truax, Amy Rigby etc. He has also played as part of CAN’s Damo Suzuki’s ‘Network’.

SHIPS MAY 27th
ACCEPTING PRE-ORDERS HERE:
“Flies” (2 disc set) CDr

Mike Tamburo – Another View of the Gate (Excerpt):

Limited to 100 copies.
 Shipping Now!
Order HERE

A few months have passed since the re-launch, and the label is invigorated as ever.
Thank you everybody for all of your support!
Read the spring newsletter here.
Subscribe to the newsletter here

Glass Trees related-side-project-band New As Youth have a new FREE digital 45 available on the Faun on a Lawn blog. They gave me the nod to mix one of the tracks. Not only was it a pleasure, it was a breath of fresh air. Perhaps Transparent will be releasing a full length CDr of Glass Trees on our CDr series. We’ll keep you posted on that. In the meantime,  check out this download and trek out to see them at Maxwells in Hoboken on Friday April 16th and/or April 29th at the Yippie Museum in NYC.

This weekend Only! Perhaps Transparent Records is having a Spring Blowout sale!
Now until (and including) Monday April 9th.

Orders of CDs are $4.00 off! Including free shipping to the continental US. Folks, that is $5.00 for a CD with Free shipping!
Use coupon number when ordering: ptrans-spring2010CD

Orders of MP3 downloads are $3.00 off! That is half price for an mp3 album!
Use coupon number when ordering: ptrans-spring2010mp3

Note: This does not apply to CDrs or Viynl

Pike
(right click to download)

Also new…  The Earthly Frames’ Volume 1 Devices are in the works. The devices are 50 custom USB drives featuring music, samples and a unique “fragment” file available directly from The Earthly Frames at live gigs. However, there will be some available for sale through the Perhaps Transparent website. In the meantime, check out The Earthly Frames Live at Zebulon, (258 Wythe AvenueBrooklyn NY), May 23rd @ 8PM with I Feel Tractor and The Binary Marketing Show. Keep a look out this September for the Earthly Frames CDr on the Perhaps Transparent CDr series.

Visit The Earthly Frames here: http://www.earthlyframes.com

What just dropped? This did. Kirsten McCord just dropped this medicine ball of ‘Endless Balance’ in our laps today. I haven’t been able to do a full sit down listen but I did skim this release with the apt subtitle ‘Music for Yoga and Meditation’. This is full on sweet compositions of new age style symphonic-drone centered around her Cello but heavily composed. Kirsten has been involved with many projects over the years including working with Rex, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Vic Chesnutt, Wharton Tiers Project and Perhaps Transparents’ own Pothole Skinny.

Kirsten has been quite busy. Besides this new release, she has teamed up with Tim Foljahn (aka Two Dollar Guitar) to create Ecotone. Perhaps Transparent is very excited to be releasing their first full length in the coming months as part of our CDr series. In the meantime, spin this and get in touch with your third eye.

Order here:
Arabesque Records Digital Store | AmazonMP3 | iTunes

Perhaps Transparent is excited about our April CDr release of a fantastic hammered dulcimer piece by Pittsburgh native Mike Tamburo, titled “Another View of the Gate”. It is a live version of “The Tenth Gate” from Mike’s ambitious 6 CD box set titled “The Tenth Gate And Other Revelations”. This version was recorded live at State College PA. One might say this is a slightly matured version of the original “Tenth Gate” piece which received many praises; including the following from Paul Simpson at Foxy Digitalis:

“As soon as I pressed play on the disc entitled “The Tenth Gate” (the discs aren’t numbered, but this was the first one in the box), I knew that it was totally worth it. The disc is a single 32 minute piece for hammered dulcimer, an instrument that is featured on most of the discs here. Tamburo truly is a master of the instrument, creating intricate patterns and textures and generally just sounding incredible. Tamburo says in the liner notes that this is his favorite hammered dulcimer piece of all time, and I think I might have to agree.”

Mike is a former member of Meisha and Arco Flute Foundation. He also runs the New American Folk Hero label. Catch him this Monday, March 22nd at Garfield Artworks in Pittsburgh when he shares the bill with MAGIK MARKERS and TUSK LORD

Mike Tamburo on Hammered Dulcimer:

Over a seething cauldron of Irish fog, the United Bible Studies float us “A Shatner Observatory” – another great release of reverb drenched organics for the Perhaps Transparent CDr series.

After thirty minutes, the first track winds down and floats us back to earth. At this point my favorite Irish band could have hung it up, instead they respark the hash and bring us back home with a sobering yet short dreamscape that at first seems like a menacing tremolo haze but quickly falls to a simmer as the ash cools.

Limited to 100 copies.
Accepting Pre-orders and will be shipping no later than March 15th.
Shipping Now!

Order HERE

Effective immediately, all shipping is now FREE within the US Continental 48 States. Shipping rates have also been reduced for all worldwide shipments.

This summer, Pothole Skinny will be releasing a new full length titled “When The Old Tree Falls”. It will be part of the Perhaps Transparent CDr Series. This release will be more of a solo effort with the help of some friends. Some tracks are already recorded and more will be laid down this spring when the studio thaws…

In the meantime, here is a free download of “The King’s Army Comes”; a track from the upcoming album:

In other Pothole Skinny News, the price of The Old Bergen Vault EP Series – a 3 plus hour collection of unreleased and live recordings – has been drastically reduced from it’s original $18 to only $6. Also, there is a new Pothole Skinny website. Check it out!

A friendly nudge and the following inquiry lead me to Mariee Sioux’s music. I was drawn out of my rural haven to a corner bar in San Francisco to experience a unique and stirring musical encounter. Naturalist, Jon Young says that great musicians are healers, they are able to move energy with the storytellers mind. Mariee Sioux has a divine gift for such storytelling. She is a stunning poet who exercises great fluency with her truly loving and richly emotive voice. Her music seems to have emerged from a state of being wholly connected to her spiritual nervous system. And to her credit, throughout her show the entire audience was wholly enticed to partake in the energetic happening. The bar seemed to be lulled into reverent quietude.

Can you briefly mention your influences or describe your sound?

I am so bad at this kind of stuff. I started playing music three years ago so it is all kind of new to me. A lot of it probably came from being around my dad who was always in blue grass bands. So as a kid I was going to all of the blue grass festivals, that was probably my biggest influence.

How did you learn to play guitar?

My dad just showed me some basic chords and I went on this trip to Argentina for a few months by myself. I was working for school and I didn’t have much to do during the night so it was really there that I taught myself and made up all of these songs. I still feel like I don’t know that much about music.

Where you writing songs before you picked up the guitar?

I wrote a lot of poems and stuff but I never really knew what to do with them so it kind of just worked its self in.

Can you describe the impetus behind your songwriting?

I am really bad at explaining how I feel while talking and my writing is the most condensed part of my feelings. I can get kind of off topic easily when I’m trying to describe stuff to people, they’ll say “what are you talking about?” and I am like, “uh I don’t know, I cant explain it.” They ask me, “how do you write these songs about all this fucking crazy stuff and not know how to explain it!?” And I don’t know, but that is why I write it. I guess I find muse in nature, and I always grew up around it. Growing up in the woods and being Indian is part of my heritage that I have strong feelings about and makes me very upset. Because I am not a very outward activist style person, my music is just my way of expressing this. At this time I don’t know what else to do about it.

How would you describe your writing process and the content that interests you?

A lot of the time I don’t know what I am writing about, I just have all of these scattered words. Only a couple times have I felt, “I really want to write about this,” usually, it is just a lot of feelings, and I never think they will come together. Sometimes I feel like “ I’ll just never write another song, its just not going to happen, I guess.” But, it just happens when it does and you can’t really force it. My songs tend to be about a bunch of different things that intertwine, ie., very personal stuff then mixed with worldly stuff.

Do you find a song or lyric meaningful in a surprising new way that you were not aware of when you were writing it?

Oh yeah, it’s so weird. I’ll look back at songs not even remembering at all when I wrote those words on a piece of paper. It’s a very haunting feeling I’ve felt a lot of strange chanelling I guess sometimes. There might be a song that was written a while ago, but all of the sudden there is this other meaning that comes out when I don’t notice, either literally in my physical life or in a metaphore I just didn’t notice at the time. In some cases, I’ll just never know where some lyrics came from but they hold a deep meaning for me spiritually and personally that can only be conveyed in song. For example, in the song “Wild Eye” I sing, “papa my pine whistler, sparrow eyed sun misser, papa my pine whistler sparrow eyed moon blisser. Mama my jaw clencher, spirit mouthed ghost dancer, mama my vein braider thousand year bone burner. Mama my tongue twister, thousand pronged antlers, mama my vein braider thousand pronged antlers. antlers. and ohhhh her wild eye.” Towards the ending the song goes into a scene of a river that goes low, where I go down gather lichen from the boulders. That is sort of about saving parts of my old town in lockets to keep it “dry” or safe, remembered, and also people in general feeling connected to living rurally, and then trying to leave my home of the forest.” Ill try to leave these branch arm behind. The swaying hands of pine, their needle tugging at your skin. Trying to pull you back deep in their wooden womb of a hundred hearts hanging suspended, moth eaten. Those muscles the size of your fist all floating around you head and not knowing who they’re a lovin’, not knowing how fast they’re a pumpin’ not knowin’ hard they’re beating, those muscles the size of your fist all floating around you head and throwing punches like we throw stones to the bottom of river beds. Who knows who is next to watch from under the currents. The rapids, rapidly raging while rapid, while we are rapidly blinking our wild eyes.” That’s a newer song and is probably one of the most intense I’ve ever written. Going back to your question, the part about the thousand pronged antlers still kinda boggles my brain. I don’t remember making that up! and every time I sing it, it feels kinda like something within me that I’m unaware of, shown and released. It’s really, really weird. The song involves a lot of my feelings about my ancestry, and personal issues within my own family. Some verses tie in the wildness, craziness, or sickness present in everyone.

That’s so great, you’ve got some powerful medicine there! At the same time you are very modest which I can truly empathize with. It is intense grappling with the desire to render a very intimate interior journey but being very shy and weary of such exposure. I wish more of us fostered the belief that performing such inspired music, can be a truly loving and catalytic act. Such pure expression must be essential in activating and mobilizing people as it can draw us to our collective wounds, awaken our true desires and initiate a healing process. The other day, after a small panic attack, I went walking alone through the redwoods and I started singing lyrics from your song Bravitzlana Rubakalva. I realized I had unconsciously tucked it into my spiritual first aid kit and it had become like a prayer. The song is very powerful lyrically and could be embraced as a kind of anthem calling us in to our personal wilds and those really reverent magical places many of us don’t explore in our very mediated modern lives. Can you track this song, explaining how it came to be, what came up and what it means to you?

I was probably really homesick at that time. I had just moved from Nevada City in northern California, to San Luis Obispo in central California. It was a year ago. I lived at my uncle’s house and I was going to community college. I would just go to school and come back, and it was always warm which was really confusing to me being used to the temperature in Northern CA. I am always more creative when I am alone. Now that I have more friends down here, I create a lot less which is fine because it’s kind of intense, feeling crazy all of the time. So missing that feeling of home, I started writing my friend this email about wanting to meet up and creating this place that I wanted to meet in. I just made up the word Bravitzlana Rubakalva and got going making up all this weird stuff in my head, because I just missed people. “Our very own country,” is our own place I wanted to escape to because I did not want to be where I was back then.

I am interested in the power of bringing the carnival of storytelling and lore back into the hands of the people and bringing a central fire to our communities. I recently attended your show in San Francisco, and I was standing next to someone in the audience who was also teary eyed and lovelorn from being taken to these beautiful and haunting places with you. She mentioned she really loved your songs because they where each their own captivating stories. So I was wondering what you thought about how music relates to storytelling.

I think that there is a lot of good music that is not very personal or storytelling. I guess all music could be really personal but not really in that loose storytelling format. There are songs that I love that are in that traditional format and there is this other world of songwriters that go off and get really personal. I am really into Joni Mitchell’s early stuff and learning about her. She writes about her most intense feelings. I feel like her music is the most intense music I have ever heard in my life. Every ounce of her feelings go into her songwriting and then it’s kind of exhausted. She was saying she doesn’t really play music any more and she’s not still touring because her songwriting was just like a release for her, from putting her daughter up for adoption and lots of love and things. Later in her life she got her daughter returned to her and she just didn’t feel the need to make music ever again. I think it’s rad to tell stories, sharing your own personal story, or a made up story. This is some of the most fun stuff to listen to. I feel like in my songs the narrative keeps changing and goes on and then its over, and nothing repeats itself too much which is either interesting to some people or too obscure for others which is fine.

You mentioned growing up in the woods and it seems earth spiritualism; family, community and kinship create the artery that connects a lot of your music.

I would say that those things where always a part of my growing up and a part of who I was. In the same way, I said I never had an activist disposition, to go out and make change. Even though I’d love to, I am not very forward like that. Growing up, my parents where always farming and gardening. I was a kid running around in the garden and it was just a way of life. Everyone else’s parents I knew where like that too. I will always see that way of living. It has been somewhat popularized by the affluent, for example, its cool to buy organic food which is kind of weird but good. Emo music seems to have changed into this hippie neo folk scene (or whatever they want to call it). For me it’s always been like that but has now become a way to fit in.

The new folk buzz in the press and music scene I find very curious. I wonder if there is something underneath it that reveals what many peoples needs are. I have been seeing this prairie home aesthetic becoming popular..

people wearing moccasins..

Underneath the hype there could be some authentic desire for people to live in a more simplistic and balanced way. It would be great if the folk revival somehow connected young people to the back-to-the-landers of the 60’s and 70’s, so many of which did not just assimilate back into bourgeois culture, but have been honing their land-based skills and awareness, and are very brilliant and effective mentors, activists and organizers. I hope people like yourself, coming from an earth-based background will inspire people to explore a more sustainable ecologically conscious lifestyle, at the very least encouraging people to buy local organic food through a Farmers Market, Community Supported Agriculture program or Food Co-op. (I feel supporting the Ecological Farming Movement is of great importance.) Maybe curiosity sparked from hearing lyrics, “Wizard pound your mortar pestle” will lead members of your audience to become healers and herbalists! Or explore their lost cultural lore.

Yeah totally! I was just talking to my friend about how there are musicians who have reached a very influential place, but I don’t see anybody doing anything with that. Not to bash the music, but the new cat power is an example of music that is totally personal but talks about the same things as before and doesn’t go beyond “ I am so sad about this love, that makes my world the most depressing place and I’m never going to get out of it, even though I am this amazing woman powerful singer” I guess some musicians just haven’t opened that door for themselves, but it could be so amazing.

After a long absence of show going and being away from the city for so long, going to your show was kind of a culture shock. The bar harbored somewhat of a cold and hostile fog that everyone seemed to unwittingly perpetuate. There was a lack of safety, camaraderie, and warmth. A musical gathering can be a very powerful cultural happening, so why aren’t the mediators, musicians or people in the crowd taking advantage of that potential? Where is the space for us to honor each other and collectively conjure creative resistance?

Some times musicians make it even more awkward in how they are presenting their work, making everyone else a little less together and less friendly. Nevada City is really small but lot’s of amazing music has been made there or has come through. There were always amazing, little but well-known musicians coming through. Little Wings for example, played these amazing little shows, and had people gather around close either by a river or in the little magic theatre. He is just so warm and people just get together in a way that is not forced or intimidating but because they want to. Seeing those shows is inspiring and then there is seeing the other way that shows can be.

Yeah, after experiencing that greater potential many shows can be very of disappointing. Do you want to speak at all about being from Nevada City, or mention any elders, mentors, or peers that have influenced your creative development?

Yeah definitely, I never went to public schools, I was either home-schooled, or went to Waldorf school. My mom was really into alternative education and she hated public schools. I went Waldorf School but she thought it was a little too loose when you get into 4th and 5th grade, so I went to The School of the Arts until 8th grade. Even when I was young a lot of what we were learning was to think about Gnomes, learning the math signs involved the gnome with the holes in his pockets who was “minus” and drawing with huge crayons and getting really crazy with main lesson books and water colors! All of that really ties into how I am or think. I have always had lot’s of teachers that where really open minded people and would help me grow in really positive ways. They taught small groups so they really cared about all of the kids they were around and you got to know them very well. In Nevada City, there was no really good alternative high school and having a brother, home schooling was too much for my parents so I jumped into a public high school, which was the weirdest thing ever.

Do you collaborate with other Nevada City musicians?

I have been friends with Alela Menig since we where babies. Our parents knew each other and we grew up in a lot of similar environments, our parents would have jams at each-others houses. We have played quite a few shows together. Occasionally she will have this song and ask if I will sing on a part, and I will say, Ok. I only recorded one time and she wasn’t around so I hope that when I record my new songs she’ll be able to sing on them.

I was wondering if you could let the readers know what your musical plans are.

It’s all still really new to me so I don’t really know about the music world, how it works and what I want from it or whether it could really offer something to me. I am still working on how I envision my stuff. Even lately I stopped going to school because I wasn’t going towards anything I actually felt passionate about. I have kind of connected with this band The Bright Black Morning Light. They have a lot of the same mind set and have a really beautiful and worldly message in their music. I just heard their new album. It is REALLY beautiful stuff, the whole feeling. They contacted me and wanted me to sing with them, so this weekend I am going to go up to do that. We are going to play some music festivals and I want to travel around and see where it takes me and what feels good.

Next up! a great release for the CDr Series by the Irish band/collective United Bible Studies.  This release, which I expect to be available in March, is titled “A Shatner Observatory”. The first track, ‘A Shatner Observatory I’  which clocks in at just under 30 minutes has a blissful cacophonic feel that at moments reminds me of Atman’s ‘Personal Forest’. I have been following United Bible Studies over the years, and even contributed music to a track on “The Shore That Fears the Sea” CD. Needless to say, I’m excited about this release. Stay tuned…

In 2001 Amish Records (CD) and Perhaps Transparent Records (LP) released P.G. Six’s acclaimed debut full length “Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites”. The album which was received with great reviews reflects the pastoral sounds of late sixties and early seventies British folk groups like The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention. It was mixed by Tim Barnes who also added his flavor of percussion on tracks like ‘When I Was A Young Man”, “The Divine Invasion”, “Go Your Way” and “The Shepherd” – all of which are also featured on this Live recording from VPRO radio in Amsterdam. Since “Parlor Tricks..”, the collaborations between P.G. Six and Tim Barnes were frequent but rarely fully documented. This Live CDr recorded at The Dwars Festival by VPRO radio in Amsterdam, is one of those rare moments.

-More on Dwars Festival at their website HERE (English translation).
-Watch a video clip from P.G. Six as they perform “Come In” HERE (Real Player needed).

This release is the first of the Perhaps Transparent Records’ CDr series. Each title is limited to 100 copies and utilizes 100% recycled packaging. The CDr case artwork (pictured above) uses natural walnut inked handmade stamps created by So Cal artist by Kim Jones. The CDrs themselves are printed on Maxell’s line of 10% post consumer CDrs.

This release is limited to 100 copies.
We are accepting pre-orders now before the Feb. 16th release date.

Order here.

Available soon from Perhaps Transparent Records.
Check out the Excerpt:

Phil Legard started his musical project Xenis Emputae Travelling Band shortly after a visit to Men-an-Tol (Cornwall) where he followed an ancient rite of crawling through a hole of an old tomb. Legard felt reborn, bought a bunch of instruments and started making music which he himself describes as ‘psychogeographic ether-folk’: melancholic music inspired by nature, landscapes and local history. Archaic drones that find their ways in releases on labels like Deserted Village, Foxglove and especially his own Larkfall.

In this interview you did with Brad Rose a while ago you mentioned you’re writing a book about dew. Are you still working on that? What got you interested in this subject and what have you found out about it?

Yes, I am still working on it, although life has been busy of late and I’ve not been able to spend as much time on it as I would like. I got rather carried away with the research and at the moment I’m just categorising and indexing everything. It’s a bit of an obsession – references to dew can be found in religion, alchemy, magic, philosophy, folklore, poetry, folksong, practically everywhere. It’s a magnet to inspiration – as a symbol it is very pure and evocative. I don’t think that the cultural meaning has changed significantly with either time or location – in many cultures the dew is a symbol of fertility, plenty, purity and divine gifts, for example: the ‘manna’ that the Jews survived on in the wilderness, the ‘sweet dew’ of nirvana in Buddhist
teachings, the ‘dew of Thy grace’ in Christian prayers. It’s also a symbol of transience, it is ethereal: present for a moment, shining gloriously, and then gone. I don’t have a concrete theory yet as to why this is the case, all I can say is next time you see dew in the early morning sit a while and observe it yourself.

Do you think this has similarities with the way you’re making music? How important is the moment, the now, of inspiration and is there a point in trying to recreate it afterwards?

Well, the place or the moment are obviously very important to the music, but they’re not everything. The way I work is usually to record one track and sometimes a few overdubs in the field or at a designated moment and then work on it more later. I regard the tracks done ‘in the field’ as the seeds of the music – perhaps, and this might sound pretentions – but they feel like a sonic reflection of the potential in the places or timings involved, which I then try to tend and cultivate as best I can. Of course, the circumstances surrounding many of the recordings are often powerful enough to keep me inspired. I’ll usually reflect on certain striking features in the land, the sky, local lore, inuitive feelings, and so on.

As the environment is very important to your music I was wondering how you translate that in your live performances. Do you often play live?

Live shows are a big problem. There are a lot of kind people who are very enthusiastic about what I’m doing and keen for me to bring it to a wider audience, so to speak. Obviously the major problems are that the music is conceived in pastoral areas or in a reflective state of mind – both things which you’re not likely to find in a pub or club. Also I don’t like imposing myself or my music on people – I’m sure people come to see bands for fun and I don’t know if XETB is most people’s idea of entertainment! Having said that I have played about three gigs with varying levels of success – usually improvising over a backing track with whatever instruments I can fit in my rucksack. I am actually just preparing to play a set at hornborough Free Festival next week. I’m trying to take gigs less seriously (I find them quite stressful!), leave my loftier aspirations at the door and just have fun. However, I don’t think playing live will ever become a regular thing.

You’re obviously very into history and folklore: where did that fascination start? What is it that you like so much about the past?

I’m not quite sure where the fascination started – although I suspect it has something to do with my father reading me HP
Lovecraft tales as bedtime stories when I was a child. I suppose that Lovecraft’s tales are rich in local lore and landscape – in particular his story The Moon Bog caught my imagination. However, I only really started taking a serious interest in (mainly local) history and lore while recording the first XETB album – until that point I had been more preoccupied with Hermeticism, astrological magic and the magical philosophies of the Renaissance. All of which still play a large role in my life (I forgot to mention earlier that it was John Dee’s allusions to dew in the Hieroglyphic Monad that drew me to the subject). It was looking into local history and folklore that really made me feel like I’d “come home”. What I like so much about this kind of study is that it puts you into contact with the past and your are able to look at your environment in a much deeper way.

Talking about hermeticism: are you familiar with the work of Frances Yates? She wrote some very interesting books about renaissance philosophy and magic…

Yes, I really admire her work! She has come in for a bit of criticism in recent years because she perhaps overstated the importance of Hermeticism in the Renaissance and misread some sources, and so on. However, as far as raising awareness of the existence of this strain of thought in that period in an academic world that was until recently against considering ‘magic’ a subject worthy of study she did an amazing job! I particularly enjoyed her Art of Memory book. Giordano Bruno is of interest to me, as are mnemonic systems – in particular the ‘emblem books,’ which reduced moral teachings into striking images (a technique also used by alchemists to illustrate their works). The magical overtones of the Hermetic Art of Memory really inspire me – the idea that a mind which is imprinted with the magical images of the universe becomes a kind of talisman and returns the soul to it’s divine origin is enchanting – folly, or not!

How much of that history and past is ‘real’ or an image you create by yourself?

Most of the inspiration or at least the impulse to record comes from ‘real’ things – for example Whirl Dub and Bogle Burn are both concerned with Long Lankin’s death, Blue Man in the Moss is the name of a standing stone, The Projection of John was recorded during a visit to Howden Minster during a time I was interested in local saints and so on. I’m very fond of the spurious histories and etymologies formulated by turn of the century folklorists and
fairytale scholars – many of their ideas really lend a sense of enchantment to subjects in which the truth is more prosaic. Things that spring to mind are Robert Graves’ claim that Dionysus was the god of psychedelic mushrooms, or Laura Kready’s hint that Frog from the song Frog Went A-Courting (which actually an old English ballad, but more popular in America) is actually Apollo! I rarely invent my own folklore, but at times I do have rather vivid imaginings – the Landless Lord, the King of Swords and his son the Prince Occidental, although almost everything else has it’s seed in something ‘real’. At present I’m very interested in the characters of local hermits – people who were often eccentric, divine or a mixture of both.

Were there any musicians in particular that made you pick up an instrument?

Good question. I said that seeing the noise musician Dachise made me begin experimenting, but I suppose it was Syd Barrett’s solo albums that made me pick up a guitar. John Kirkpatrick made me want to try playing squeezebox instruments – I feel terrible saying that, since he’s a shining adept, while I’m total crap and just use it for playing wheezing drones!

Anyone that influenced the music you’re playing now?

Well, It’s almost unavoidable that the XETB recordings are coloured by what I’m listening to, reading or thinking about at the time, despite often trying to play ‘no mind’ muic solely inspired by spirit of the place or by some kind of subtle intuitions. Artists that have probably influenced me are Ghost, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, early Cabaret Voltaire, The Third Ear Band and British folk like Stone Angel, Flibbertigibbet, Forest, Comus and Steeleye Span. Oh, and I almost forgot – Igor Wakhevitch is a major figure to me, his records are mindblowing! I’ve not even thought about authors like Robert Graves, Edmund Spenser, John Dee, Trithemius, Richard Rolle, Myrddin, Clark Ashton Smith, Kathrine Briggs’ monumental collections of folktales, S. Baring Gould, Edmund Bogg…

I hear some echo’s of ambient, folk, psych and drone in your music: are those genres that you’re listening too?

They’re all genres that I’ve listened to at some point. In particular I used to be a really big psych fan as a teenager – spending hours in incense filled rooms listening to Kaleidoscope and Jason Crest, while memorising the catalogue numbers of rare Deram singles. Folk has always been part of my life, since my parents were involved in the folk & blues scene and had a nice collection of records which I would occasionally steal. And yeah, drone – in particular Vibracathedral and Skullflower were real ear-openers to me. At present I’m mainly listening to early music, especially William Byrd and John Dowland. Also I’ve had a recent epiphany in the form of Arvo Pärt’s Annum per Annum – a spectacular piece of organ music!

You’ve got some upcoming new releases on Larkfall by The Pneumatic Consort and JW Light? Could you talk a bit about those?

The Pneumatic Consort was a one-off project that recorded a series of woodwind improvisations either side of Beltane. The sessions were inspired by a magical recipe in Reginald Scott’s Discoverie of Witchcraft. Essentially the procedure begins as the kind of divination for hidden treasure that is common amongst the texts of the time. Many Elizabethans seemed to believe that the landscape was riddled with forgotten hordes (and perhaps it once was – there are accounts from the time of people ransacking prehistoric burial mounds) and it seems many were willing to risk their souls in order to find it by illicit magical means. Anyway, this particular spell takes a turn for the bizarre when half way through it seems to turn into an experiment to procure the services of the Queen of the Fairies! There’s something psychedelic and phantasmagoric about it, and it’s unusual in that it deals with Fairies, rather than Judeo-Christian angels and demons which is the norm for this kind of text. Johann Wlight used to run the Nid Nod label, but seems to have made the decision to become something of a hermit, distancing himself from the whole drone/noise ‘scene’. He’s released numerous discs which mix drone and field recordings to a melancholic and alienated effect. I think this release might be his last testament – it’s certainly one of the most mournful things I’ve heard.

You’re gonna release something on Phil Todd’s label: how did that happen?

I got in touch with Phil Todd through seeing him at gigs in Leeds and seeing Ashtray Navigations perform every now and then. He’s a real nice guy and insanely productive!

One last question: could you tell us one of your favourite folktales?

It would probably be The Dead Moon. It’s one of those tales with various strange elements that perhaps hint at ancient beliefs and traditions. The Moon finds out that when she doesn’t shine various evils bogles come out and it isn’t safe to walk alone at night in the marshes, so she goes to investigate, wrapped in a cloak to conceal her light. Unfortunately she slips in to a pool the marshes and the branch of a submerged tree wraps around her keeping her underwater. The bogles then put a stone over the place where she was imprisoned to hid her light. Well, the people notice that the Moon is not increasing her light and a chosen group visit the wise woman who, using the divinatory technique of scrying in a bowl and a mirror
finds out where the Moon is. She tells the chosen people that they enter the marsh with a stone in their mouths, carrying a hazel twig and not say a word. Then walk without fear until they find a coffin, a candle and a cross, at which point they will be near the Moon. They find a stone in across a pool that looks like a coffin, and the submerged tree that holds the Moon beneath the water with it’s branches looks like a cross. Finally there is a will o’ the wisp floating about the tree. They decide they have found the spot where the Moon is and move the stone, only to see the face of the Moon looking at them from beneath the water. They are blinded by her radiance and the next they know the Noon is in the sky, shining fully and making their way home safe from the bogles.

It’s a beautiful story, and various things fascinate me, such as the ritual items – the stone in the mouth (perhaps to enforce their vow of silence) and the hazle twig (a holy tree with a vast number of attendand superstitions, one of which being protection against evil spirits). One could ponder the meaning and origins of the tale for a long time.