Melbourne’s psych-folk troubadour Adam Geoffrey Cole from Trappist Afterland recently released ‘The tracks of the Afterlander’ on CD, limited edition vinyl and digital. The album is described as a sublime collection of acid folk tracks that embodies English 60s/70s psych-folk à la Pentangle, The Incredible String Band, and Fairport Convention, complete with Adam’s delicate fingerpicking, gnostic lyrics and idiosyncratic vocal moan.
The album consists of six new songs and five raw and spacious reworkings of Trappist Atterland songs…
I managed to catch Adam at Woolf II in 2019 for the launch of Insects in Amber; it was one of the weekends highlights alongside performances from Alasdair Roberts, Bevis Frond, Kitchen Cynics, Ian A Anderson, Alex Rex, The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus, Sharron Kraus, The Left Outsides and more.
For this new release, Adam plays the guitar, Cittern, oud and Tanpura is joined by Anthony Cornish (who also recorded, mixed and mastered the release) on harmonium, violin and Mellotron and special guest Grey Malkin, who plays piano, Glockenspiel and mixed the track ”Houses on a hill’.
The album is released on Ramble Records, an Independent record label based in Melbourne, Australia, specialising in outsider music, guitar music, acid folk, avant-folk, psych, free jazz, Indian classical and avant-garde sounds from around the globe. They’re a great label, and other notable recent new releases include Blake Hornsby‘s A Collection of Traditional Folk Songs & Tunes Vol. 1 – you can find them here – https://ramblerecords.bandcamp.com/
The author Tom Cox has been popping up a lot recently; a short story from his bestselling book Help The Witch inspired Stick in the Wheel’s ‘Robot’, and he also wrote the liner notes for this album.
Talking about the music Adam plays, he states – The term “acid folk” has been used to describe what Cole does but what he does tunnels deeper than most music in that genre, seems more tapped into its own source – perhaps, in fact, The Source. There is the sense that it is coming from somewhere deep in the earth – or, more accurately, deep in some other earth, on a slightly different planet…Think about what Neil Young’s After The Goldrush might have sounded like if it was more haunted and obsessed by the eternal life force of all of nature and written in a hollowed out tree by a monk hundreds of years before the event of recorded sound, but you still won’t quite be there.
Listen to House on a Hill:
Tracklisting
- Stars In The Appletree
- Regeneration Sect
- Sea Burial
- Fairy Asylum
- House on a Hill
- Fortified
- Clay Sparrow
- From Which Burning Bush
- A Man Of Sorrow
- Joseph’s Lament
- God Botherings Part 5
The Tracks of the Afterlander is out now. Order here – https://ramblerecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-tracks-of-the-afterlander