Folkatron Sessions – Home No More (EP)
Upcycled Sounds – 2021
Extensively featured on Folk Radio via a series of video premieres, Folkatron Sessions are a collective of musicians from England, Ireland and France whose experimental approach to folk music finds them mixing and blending styles of contemporary music-making with strong traditional songs. There has always been innovation and invention, take from the past and give to the future, and the five tracks on Home No More do this by exploring the different ideas of the individuals within the collective. However, there is also a strong sense of cohesion that one could only get from actual collective work.
Three Galleys introduces these ideas, electronic pulses driving this tale of a newly-wed bride stolen by marauding Danes, sung here by guest vocalist Sam Lee. Whether the song is ‘traditional’ in that it has a heritage that can be traced back to the mists of time, or at least to a period that would give it some authenticity, or whether it is a 20th-century fabrication does not detract from the result. And anyway, when does a song become traditional?
But, before I get off-piste, An Bonnán Bui, The Yellow Bittern, which was initially an Irish poem, is beautifully rendered by Hannah Jacobs. Ostensibly about a bittern that died for want of a drink, this version is based on Anne Briggs’ Bonambuie. The original poem has been interpreted as a satirical ode to the author’s lack of alcoholic drink. The sombre, serious message in this version, about the outcome of excessive drinking, has the taste of a full orchestra behind it though it is, for all that, quite intimate.
A song from Ulster, Flower of Magherally, has sampled beats underneath the breathy vocals, an unobtrusive bass giving depth to the aural field. It is followed by an example of modern music-making explicitly taking the upper hand. Juhan’s Night Train is based on an Estonian pipe tune; the distorted strings are a foil for the lyrical ebb and flow of violin and cello that come and go over the top. It is hard to avoid the word ambient, and about two minutes in, a regular beat eases us into ambient chill as the overlays of various strings shift around in a musical game.
The final track is as straight as they come. My Son John has been described by Jon Boden as a strange combination of jollity and social comment and, in another version, given some up to date verses by Martin Carthy to reflect the war in Afghanistan. An alternative version (My Son Tim) features on John Francis Flynn’s new album I Would Not Live Always, which finds him ‘crossing trad with wholly unusual outside influences’. Here, the Folkatron Sessions give it yet another treatment. The juxtaposition of the gentle guitar and equally soft voices, both distant from the horror of war, throw the loss of limbs, the effects of hostilities into a cold, dark focus.
Folkatron Sessions’ first outing, Mais C’est Quoi Maman, was more than well-received, the result of an intensive week in a folk residency which was followed by the album Skiver, the result of an equally consuming six days. This time, Home No More came out of the necessities of being an inter-national collective working together during a pandemic, arranging and recording remotely. The first two songs progressed around the members; the final three are recordings of some of the band members who had managed to get together for a bit of a live recording.
What stands out for me with Home No More is that the experimentation is very subtle and is not readily apparent until a third of the way into a track. Then the enquiring mind picks out something that makes me say, that’s different… interesting… unusual. And I don’t mean that to sound weak because it isn’t; it just reflects that subtlety, the nuance that the collective instils into all their productions. This shared love of experimentation, of working under intensive conditions, of pulling together different influences and music styles, is exciting, but at the same time, they manage to enhance and celebrate traditional song. This is experimental folk at its best…this is excellent.
EP Home No More is out now on Upcycled Sounds.
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