Today sees the release on Broadside Hacks Recordings of ‘Folklore 1979‘, the acclaimed new album from slacker trad duo Milkweed. To mark its release, watch the full-length 11-minute accompanying video created by Greg Butler of Oh Kestrel Films, who is also responsible for the excellent documentary The Ambiguity of David Thomas Broughton. Butler captures the album’s strange narrative perfectly, giving life and form to the Folklore Society…
The duo’s third work in as many years, Folklore 1979 takes its lyrics exclusively from an academic journal published by the Folklore Society and renders it into a piece of music that blurs the lines between what is found and what is created. Across a beguiling 11 minutes, Milkweed unspool like a single disjointed dream narrative, taking in ritual, extinction, migration, esoteric cosmogony and Arthurian legend.
Don’t miss Milkweed’s April Tour dates (see below).
This new collection also offers their third such work in as many years. In 2022 they released Myths and Legends of Wales, which saw them hit on a formula that has served them well ever since: a short album inspired by the discovery, manipulation and interpretation of a specific folkloric text. In this case it was a 1984 title by Tony Roberts. The Mound People followed in 2023, this time inspired by a 1974 text on preserved bronze-age human remains by Danish archaeologist Peter Glob. (Previously available on cassette only, these releases are now available on streaming services for the first time).
The duo describe their sound as ‘Slacker Trad’ which is both true and somehow insufficient. On the face of it, their musical concerns are transatlantic – they follow the rich creative line that runs between British traditional music and the songs and tunes of the eastern United States. In reality, their scope is global and rooted in deep time, with influences from prehistory bleeding into a troubled and troubling modern era. As a result, their music doesn’t sit easily anywhere, but ricochets between bewitching Appalachian folk music and disconcerting hauntological.
KLOF Mag’s Thomas Blake:
Folklore 1979, like their previous two releases, uses written source material, serendipitously obtained, as a kind of rough ore from which they extract lyrics. These are then turned into short songs that draw on Appalachian and British folk, experimental electronics and a kind of warped plunderphonic hip-hop aesthetic to create something that sounds, quite simply, like nothing else in the world.
…Taken together, these aspects contribute to one of the most invigorating and interesting releases of recent years. The duo, with their insistence on the temporary nature of their work and the denial of authorship, would no doubt balk at the term masterpiece, but for as long as Folklore 1979 exists in the world, it will have to contend with such labels.
Milkweed Tour Dates
MAR 1 // Ceredigion, Gwyl Ffynnon Garon Festival
APR 5 // Brighton, The Hope & Ruin, *
APR 8 // Oxford, Common Ground
APR 9 // Leeds, Hyde Park Book Club
APR 10 // Manchester, The Castle Hotel
APR 12 // Newcastle, The Lubber Fiend *
APR 14 // Edinburgh, Settlement Projects
APR 16 // Glasgow, Glad Cafe
APR 21 // Cambridge, Black Fen Folk Club
APR 24 // London, Trefusis Hall, Cecil Sharp House
*with Shovel Dance Collective
Tickets: https://milkweed.lnk.to/Live2024
Bandcamp: https://milkweedfolk.bandcamp.com/album/folklore-1979-2
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mlkwd_/