Various – Dark Britannica IV: The Forme To The Fynisment Foldes Ful Selden
Cold Spring (CSR252CD) – Out Now
Translating from Old English as “The beginning very seldom matches the end”, this concluding edition of the Dark Britannica series seems a fitting subtitle at this time but is purely coincidental as the focus is that atmospheric music known as dark folk developed from freak folk, which here celebrates the land, nature and seasonal cycles. The style’s half-century history is partly seen in Cherry Red Records’ Dust On The Nettles or more recent Sumer Is Icumen In, an old English trend that is more pronounced here (the title is from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). This new compilation features 21st-century musicians, some forsaking heavy metal amps to explore quieter tones and weightier words.
This is clear from the get-go of this 32-track double CD, with the augmented Manchester five-piece Winterfylleth. Deep-tone vocals backed by strummed guitar, strings and choral harmonies full of allegory, is a panoramic opening distant from their acclaimed black metal origins and closer to Third Ear Band. With seven albums since 2006, sporting different hats ‘n’ beards (presumably), Winter Full Moon (as their name translates) take an interesting path here. The current fashion for musical multi-tasking also adorns the fugue of Bismerch My Name by Sol-de-Muerte, its pagan drum and drone fluttered by flute cadences. Formed in 2010—inspired they say by Dead Can Dance, Current 93 and Nico—they focus on loss and love’s darker side. Two of the band also contribute the swirling magic of a layered pulse on Fine Lines. Finglebone from the west country evoke a workshop (without electricity of course, it’s not been found yet) or wood cabin with rain, steps, door opening, distant voices and bell chimes.
Tim Lane contributes Shadow Song from 2018, a sprightly almost brazen air accompanied by equally forthright acoustic guitar; he reappears on the tad over-earnest Gallows Song with Hayley Evenett from the Stuff of Dreams Theatre Company’s An Honest Gentleman (2019), a rare genre-joining recalling Incredible String Band’s experiments. Soldat’s synths and breathy voices are as eerie as a banshee watch a-wandering in the pre-industrial past, a trail also trod by Scotland’s The Psychogeographical Commission on Fires Of London. The Familiars’ Shaming Of Agnes Leman is more traditional fare (violin included) about a village’s brazen mistress: Thomas Hardy on market day, except it’s in Norfolk and the friendly girl is punished as a witch, so centuries earlier (presumably). Deep as root and bone is The Sound Of Antler, with an unusual but evocative conjunction of accordion and cornet on a wordless lament from Them Bones (2013), and Thornland swoon in the magical moonlight where the soul gropes.
The “medieval Celtic speed folk band” Perkelt weave wind-instruments through a traditional 18th-century Scottish-Gaelic ballad from their Dancer In The Wind (2008), a trio with Czech roots basing original compositions on medieval melodies. A Tiding Of Magpies’ Oaklands is a G.H. Lowden poem about self-protection in nature’s midst, a paen to trees adapted by Oz Hardwick on the digital album The Forgotten Grimoire (2015). This professor poet at Leeds University, who was on the label’s earlier compilation Under England’s Sky (2012), also plays the dulcimer in the duo Sixpenny Wayke whose Madron Well sounds, fittingly, more like “Imagine well” with a rhythmic chant music akin to glamouring, in that word’s original meaning of hypnotized by the fairies.
Field recording reappears to good effect on SedayneLORE’s A Country Life, merging nature from a Norfolk village with synthesizer in a church in 1972 to a wax cylinder recording of a colonel reciting on St. George’s Day in 1945 in what’s called a “real-time séance”. They have done a few albums since 2001. My Silent Wake, a four-piece recalling Amazing Blondel and Gryphon from the ‘70s, has a too-short bewitchment from several centuries ago, while the duo Peleser spin a yarn about crime in the woods from their recent album punningly titled Vestigial Tales, their website describing “supernatural folk tales grounded with deep roots in the dark English soil”. Robert Pitcher’s waves of solar energy vaguely recalls John Martyn’s Solid Air.
A standout on the first CD is The Roses Of Eyam by Beau, a pioneer of some of the essence of dark folk who first recorded under this name 50 years ago for John Peel’s Dandelion label. After its demise, the still-youthful sounding Trevor Midgley took his 12-string guitar into Tractor’s Lancashire studio in 1975 for this hypnotic tale set in 1665, about a tailor who left his belongings including material just sent from London to go north. As plague was near, the inhabitants walled-in the village as best they could: less than 10% of the 350 locals survived. This master of chiming, almost orchestral 12-string with magisterial poetry delivered passionately pulsates with the pulse of ages, even more so in these times. The late Roy Bailey first recorded it (Hard Times 1982), and later the Canadian group Soft Focus (Tunes In A Paper Bag 2007), which is on YouTube, and a version was also taped by Jim Milne of Tractor. Beau released it on a vinyl LP in 2012.
Winterfylleth’s Dan Capp reappears on CD2 as Wolcensmen for Shield And Spear, the almost glockenspiel-like guitar suitably misty and haunting: imagine Anglo-Saxon warriors trudging through a snowy forest or eyeing their enemy from a hill. He claims influence from Steeleye Span, early Ulver, Blackmore’s Night, and the books of Tolkien. In an interview, he says there’s a heathen element to the music and cannot see anything to romanticize about post-Christian England, the beginning of its decline he believes. This project predates his joining of Winterfylleth in 2015. Mellow Candle-like, Brocc build to something fine on Call Of The Wild Woods, expanding on arrival to run and gambol in its joy. Pipes, hurdy-gurdy, mandola, harp, recorders, bowed psaltery, mix with exotic drums and voice harmonies for a magical trip through a mythic landscape of Britain’s islands.
Kindred yearning with guitars and pipes colour Venereum Arvum’s Dragon Hills, while Silver of World Union’s The Crossing traces a different modern era. Sand Snowman with Moonswift combine on Samhain Rain named after the autumn pagan festival. From the gong intro, leaps guitar paralleling a pagan ring offering perhaps. Since 2006, the multi-instrumentalist and painter Gavan Kearney (Sand Snowman) has recorded several albums said to be inspired by Ravel, Bartok, Nick Drake and the Canterbury Scene and featured on work by Steve Wilson, the late Judy Dyble, and Bobbie Watson (Comus) etc.
Coma Wall (Summer, from the LP Wood & Wire (2013), duel guitars and banjo in a non-American way, with heavy pulsating chords scored by bass and drums. This pair of couples, as they were then, here spar with doom metal band Undersmile, who have featured in the Obelisk magazine. Jo Beth Young from Devon shows an interesting combo (piano, violin, cello, bass) for confidently varied vocals, “deeply moving and soulful” wrote Louder Than War. Nathaniel Mann (Whip Crack Away) is almost circus-like from before animal exploitation. He is one-third of the experimental folk trio the Dead Rat Orchestra and a university researcher of audio culture: John Cale meets Tom Waits perhaps? The CD ends at the lovely gateway to more fey realms inspired by Byron’s She Walks In Beauty, for Eldorado by Ignis Astrifer. Literary pointers are valid: the label cites the American one-time banker T.S.Eliot, a rather odd choice, one might opt for Mervyn Peake of Gormenghast, Beowulf, Chaucer or George Barker, but this is for everyone just seeking beauty and craft as an uplift from these doldrum times.
The second CD features an exclusive song from the Australian Peter Ulrich (Lammas Dance) of Dead Can Dance, cathedral-like in multi-voiced echoing (referencing John Barleycorn) and resonating like its title from the pagan festival Loaf Mass in Anglo-Saxon times. Turns and completion of cycles seem fitting in this finale started 13 years ago with John Barleycorn Reborn, celebrations in song of seasons, nature and life through humanity’s relationship to the natural world from an eclectic label that’s released sounds as diverse as Coil, Jagath, Sol Invictus, and world music. No two tracks sound alike, which says much for the ranging talent and spectrum.
In the pioneering ‘60s, the compiled were signed to a label dedicated to their roster and more widely to something of a scene. In these more independent times, some of the acts here aren’t signed to a label at all, however, but linked by a musical style. This rich tapestry interweaving backgrounds and approaches is available as a download or double jewel case with booklet, imitating ancient paper nicely but alas no info about performers. A crafted artefact in keeping with its almost pre-industrial contents (at least in atmosphere), as if we are among ancestors.
Order via Bandcamp: https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/the-forme-to-the-fynisment-foldes-ful-selden-csr252cd