We’ve reached the penultimate release in Folklore Tapes’ Ceremonial County series, and Vol.XXIII is an absolute treat. On Side 1 (East Sussex) is a new composition by Daisy Rickman, Salamander Salamandra. It takes as its starting point the myth surrounding salamanders: that they are birthed in flame. Like many such myths, it has its roots in reality. Salamanders were likely to be seen scuttling from freshly-lit bonfires due to their penchant for hibernating in piles of firewood. Rickman ties this legend in with the famous bonfire night celebrations that happen every year in East Sussex’s county town, Lewes. Rickman’s piece is inspired by the salamander’s symbolic journey through darkness into light, and by the pagan roots of the bonfire celebrations. It begins in discordance, with scraped strings and droning harmonium creating an eerie and confusing atmosphere, but Rickman’s chanted vocals and clattering percussion soon arrive, making things both more human and more universal. Rickman plays every instrument herself, including cello, violin, bouzouki, guitar, recorder, whistles and bells, and she builds up an impressive, immersive wave of sound. Like all of her work – not least the wonderful 2024 album Howl – it feels inextricably tied to natural processes, things more mysterious and older than human life. Her music feels like an offering to an ancient and not entirely benevolent set of deities. By the end of this piece, we are caught in the eldritch magic of this startling slice of psych-folk.
A similarly uncanny atmosphere pervades Side 2 (Lancashire), a composition by Magpahi called Listening for Jenny Greenteeth. Magpahi is Alison Cooper, a Todmorden-based musician who works at the intersection of folk, hauntology and modern composition. Jenny Greenteeth is a malevolent Lancashire water spirit, a river-hag with the alarming hobby of pulling children into the water and drowning them. Cooper employs an evocative array of whistles and plucked strings to create a leafy, watery tableau, before her crystalline, folky singing lures you further off the beaten path. This is music that slips easily between worlds, more gentle but more disconcerting than the proggy forest-psych of Comus or the cultish shenanigans of the Incredible String Band. Half way through the acoustic instrumentation makes way for spooky electronics and creepy spoken word: imagine Delia Derbyshire scoring an adaptation of an Arthur Machen story. And then the folkiness returns, and it feels like we’ve been pulled from the water, changed in ways we don’t yet comprehend. Cooper makes the legend believable: the whole thing sounds simultaneously like a warning and a lure. It’s a perfect summation of the unearthly charms of weird England.
Ceremonial County Series Vol.XXIII – East Sussex | Lancashire (March 5th, 2026) Folklore Tapes
Note on the Series: Each tape can be collected individually each month or as part of a full subscription, and they are available directly from Folklore Tapes at www.folkloretapes.co.uk, via their Bandcamp page at https://folkloretapes.bandcamp.com/, and from selected independent record shops.
Read all our reviews in this series so far.