Experimental banjo player, instrument-maker and avant-folk mover and shaker Jacken Elswyth began the Betwixt & Between tape series back in 2018 as a way of highlighting the links and dissonances that exist between traditional music and the hyper-experimental improvised music scene, with a particular focus on ambient and drone. Featured artists have included Sproatly Smith, Quinie, C. Joynes, The Silver Field and Ceri Rhys Matthews (and frequently Elswyth herself). The series features cover art by Elswyth: each new release is represented by a mythical creature adapted from various antique bestiaries. The whole enterprise has a delightfully Borgesian quality to it.
This, the tenth instalment in the series, features three songs by Nick Granata and one longer piece by hypnagogic drone emissary Dawn Terry. The beastie on the cover is a cefusa, a mythical dog with the hands and feet of a human, which was described in Mediaeval texts and said to have existed in ancient Rome. The cefusa’s inherent strangeness provides a clue to the nature of the music on offer here. Granata, who, like Elswyth, is a member of the Shovel Dance Collective, kicks things off with My Chainmaker Lad. It’s a pretty obscure traditional song, here rendered all the more so by Granata’s setting of it: experimental plinks and plunks of plucked fiddle seem to take aim at the very idea of melody, while the singing is both beautiful and unsettling. Granata is concerned with music’s ability to manipulate time, and the fruits of their practice seem to exist simultaneously in a deep, unknowable past and a hyper-real, startlingly clear present.
Nailer’s Song takes this idea even further: a melodically simple work song set to a subtle, shifting drone, it disorients and destabilises the very notion of song, and of work. In this way, it becomes a comment on the shifting nature of creativity. The Lord’s Nailmaker continues the idea. A long narrative song with religious overtones, it is backed by the most basic of percussive beats, relying on Granata’s voice, which becomes oddly spellbinding as the song progresses. Although it is an original, it contains all the hallmarks of some great lost folk song.
It’s surprising to note that these are Granata’s first solo recordings – their voice is so distinctive, and the thematic drive of their practice so well-defined that it seems like they’ve been doing it for years. Dawn Terry has a longer history as a solo artist. She has become known for building longform organic drones from hurdy-gurdy or accordion notes. Her contribution here – I Still Love You And I Always Will – unfolds over a quarter of an hour. Unlike many drone artists, she isn’t afraid to build melodic or percussive elements into her soundworld. Here, the notes shift in both tone and resonance and are punctuated by simple knocks, bangs and short periods of silence. Terry’s wordless voice permeates the performance, at first seeming like a shadow of the accordion, then digressing slightly into weird, even ritualistic territory as the three-note pattern of the drone establishes itself. What transpires is a kind of epic minimalism, a music that creates its own vast landscapes but nonetheless feels very human.
The combination of Terry and Granata is perfectly judged: the two are different but ultimately complementary, and the nature of the release makes their work seem like a found artefact, beguiling and beautiful in equal measure. The Betwixt & Between series has thrown up a wide array of vital, surprising new folk music, and the latest release is one of its best yet.
Nick Granata / Dawn Terry – Betwixt & Between 10 is out now (Digital/Cassette): https://betwixtbetweentapes.bandcamp.com/album/betwixt-between-10