When we were first introduced to London-based duo Milkweed via their debut 2021 winter-themed EP Milkweed Sing Carols, Thomas Blake highlighted how “their mystery is part of their appeal”, adding, “They seem intent on reviving the more outlandish, eccentric traditions of folk music, where old and new religions intermingle and where strange, bewitching sounds proliferate. This can only be a good thing.”
Their 2023 album, The Mound People, saw the “Milkweed myth grow even weirder and more alluring.” Featuring eight short songs, “conceptually linked by a 1974 text on preserved bronze age human remains by Danish archaeologist Peter Glob (who became famous in academia after his investigation of the Tollund Man). The band were sent the text by Minnesota-based shipwright and artist Justin RM Anderson, who rightly suspected that it might prove inspirational.”
For last year’s Folklore 1979 (a KLOF Album of the Year and one of Tom’s Top 10 Albums of the Year), inspiration came in the form of a 1979 academic journal published by The Folklore Society. “The words, whittled down to nine semi-distinct songs over eleven minutes, include a spoken recording called The Legend of the Pacing White Mustang, which discusses the strange evolutionary fate of North America’s wild horses.” Blake called it a “masterpiece” and “one of the most invigorating and interesting releases of recent years.”
For their latest album, Remscéla, due for release on 2nd May 2025 via Broadside Hacks recordings, they push themselves still futher, turning to all 400 pages of Thomas Kinsella’s masterful translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, rather than manipulated snippets.
This is quite an undertaking, and you get a feel for the scale of this when reading an article that Lorcán Mac Mathúna wrote for KLOF Mag a while back. He was writing about a new multidisciplinary performance of the Great Celtic Epic The Táin…here he is talking about the Irish painter Louis Le Brocquy who illustrated Thomas Kinsella’s inspired version of the Táin Bó Cúailnge (and whose work adorns the album cover of Remscéla).
Imagine the medieval Gaelic courts where the reachaire (the storyteller) painted the action of The Táin with gesture of speech and hand, and brought a world from the spectral realms of an imagined past momentarily from the shadows. Louis Le Brocquy said that the words of The Táin cast shadows on the page. Shadows that he cast himself in ink. Forms and figures unmistakeably cast in deed and action.
Action is the essence of story, and a story as deeply formed in the primordial hunger of human nature casts striking shadows of deeds done, and their implications. These shadows are the relief of all the hunger that drives mankind’s ambitions; a portrayal in stark relief not of persons but of their unbridled inner hunger.
An Táin evokes all of this. It is a story too powerful to remain static on a page. It is a complex and many-layered story of intrigue; an unrestrainable drama that leaps from the page with a narrative style that brings the watched tension of the ancient court before our eyes.
After it took an entire year just to process 20 pages, however, G found herself humbled. “It made me appreciate oral traditions in a completely different way, the intensity with which you had to engage with the work to feel like you could understand and transmit it.”
Alongside the announcement of their new album, Milkweed have shared their lead single, ‘Exile of the Sons of Uisliu’. On the track, the band say:
“Exile of the Sons of Uisliu is one of many remscéla, or pre-tales, leading up to the Táin. In the text, Derdriu, ‘the loveliest woman in all Ireland’, has been raised in isolation until she is ready for the bed of Conchobor, high king of Ulster. Derdriu falls in love with Noisiu, one of the sons of Uisliu, and together they escape to Alba where they again find themselves in peril. They are lured back to Ulster by Conchobor, but are ultimately betrayed.”
The ink on the page will once again cast its shadow.
As Thomas Blake said, “Milkweed are still the most exciting and inscrutable band on the British folk scene.”
Exile of the Sons of Uisliu is also our Song of the Day.
Pre-Order Remscéla (Vinyl/Cassette?Digital): https://milkweedfolk.bandcamp.com/track/exile-of-the-sons-of-uisliu-3
Upcoming Milkweed Tour Dates
tickets here:
FEB 28 // Cardiff, Shift, w/ able noise
MAR 1 // Bristol, Cube Microplex w/ able noise
MAR 11 // Austin, Texas SXSW: The Velveeta Room (Broadside Hacks Showcase)
APR 29 // London, EartH Theatre w/ Shovel Dance Collective
MAY 3 // Saltair, Salt of the Earth Festival
MAY 4 // Salford, Sounds from the Other City Festival
13 MAY // Clitheroe, The New inn
14 MAY // Hull, New Adelphi
15 MAY // Edinburgh, The Waverley
16 MAY // Glasgow, The Glad Cafe
17 MAY // Gossop, The Globe
18 MAY // York, The Arts Barge
20 MAY // Cambridge, tbc,
21 MAY // Oxford, Common Ground
22 MAY // Hastings, The Pig
23-25 MAY // Wiltshire, Acid Horse Festival
27 MAY // Ashburton, Ashburton Arts Centre
28 MAY // Hereford, Weidshire, The Speakeasy at Left Bank
30 MAY // Aberystwyth, Fire in the Mountain Festival (festival runs from 29 May-1 JUNE)
4-5 JUL // Cumbria, Mooreforge Folk Festival
AUG 1-3 // Oxfordshire, Supernormal Festival