Two very different but extremely inventive albums are released on the same day next month, both with folk undertones, although that's just the start.
The Imagined Village – Bending The Dark - 14 May 2012
– ECC Records
Album Launch / Band Party – The Electric Palace,
BRIDPORT, DORSET.
Thursday 16 May 2012
“Bending the Dark, as a title
doesn’t refer to trendy new Physics, deviant sexual practices or even
Lord of the Ring wizardry, it’s really very simple: It doesn’t
matter how bad things are if you pull together you can turn the situation
around and come out of the darkness stronger and more confident.”
Bending The Dark is
an album about group survival.
The Imagined Village are:
Eliza
Carthy (fiddle, vocals)
EC; Martin Carthy (guitar, vocals)
MC; Simon Emmerson (guitars,
cittern) SE; Ali Friend (bass,
vocals) AF; Andy Gangadeen (drums)
AG; Johnny Kalsi (dhol, tabla,
percussion) JK; Barney Morse Brown
(cello, vocals) BMB; Sheema Mukherjee
(sitar, vocals) SM; Jackie Oates
(fiddle, vocals) JO; Simon Richmond
(keyboards, electronics, vocals) SR
This is a band written press statement.
Around the time of
writing material for the 2nd album Chris Wood kept saying ‘if
the band’s going to survive we can’t keep covering material from
the Martin Carthy song book” a sentiment Martin shared.
MC: ‘The Imagined Village was an experiment started
back in 2004 to see if trad and non trad musicians could work together on what
was largely my back catalogue, something I was only too happy to engage
in…”
With this in mind we
came off the road in 2010 hoping to embark on a period of writing fresh,
original material or interpretations of trad songs not normally covered within
Martin’s repertoire.
SE “It was apparent that if the band was to move
forward we had to write a new body of songs based on our skills as lyricist and
composers embracing contemporary issues as well as reflecting an English
musical identity that isn’t specifically rooted in the folk
tradition.”
Norma
Waterson’s heath issues late 2010 interrupted this strategy; Martin was
not able to do the proposed tour. We had 2 choices: cancel the tour or continue
and use any profits to help support the family in times of need. We chose the 2nd
option. The final gig of the tour was on the 1st March 2011 in
London at Cecil Sharpe House and we closed the tour and set with a live mobile
phone link-up to Martin in Robin Hoods Bay, where he told the assembled crowd
back at the London venue that Norma was on the road to recovery and he’d
be back in the band as soon as he had learnt the new material, which, he added,
all sounded very good down the phone. Following the tour Chris Wood decided to
take the rest of the year as a sabbatical to concentrate on his own writing.
Which was fine but then we experienced another major setback. Mass, who SE has
used as an engineer, mixer and co-producer since the 2nd Afro Celt album back
in 1999, was suddenly unable to continue working on the album due to his
father’s illness. Again we were a key player down, so the two Simons had
to step up and fill in for Mass, adding engineering duties to writing,
producing and performing.
We continued
regardless with the recording, revising and refining a body of over 20
potential songs. The rhythm section was ready to record in the Strong Room
studios, London in October 2011 and January 2012
with our new engineer Paul Grady, from Doncaster,
who completed the project as the mixing engineer.
SR: “Martin eventually came to our studio in
December 2011 and we all felt the band sound was complete again. It was great
to have him back.”
The mixing was
complete early February 2012.
SE ‘As a band we feel we’ve come through
tough times but just through dogged perseverance and the simple joy of playing
together we’ve achieved what we set out to do when we came off the Empire
and Love Tour January 2010: make a recording that reflects both the fun and
energy we generate as a live unit, plus our respective skills, eccentricities
and unique identities as song writers, arrangers and musicians. We’ve
never felt more united as a band and we hope this comes across on the
album’
1
The Guvna – AF brought
the demo to the studio with the feel and vibe all there from the off and the
band fell in love with its nod towards eccentric English TV scores, the mighty
Jerry Dammers and the days of Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop. SR added what has come to be known in the band rather alarmingly as
the “Supertramp” middle key board breakdown, and sampled AF’s
guide vocal ideas for a melody – creating an Alivox synth sound layered
with a Theremin. AG added rhythmic loops, SR brought a bit of Bays-style
dub trickery, and by the time the piece was ready for studio recording, SE had
refined all the ska and rock-steady guitars into place, something he will
openly admit is closer to his own roots than English trad. The spelling of The
Guvna was taken by AF from the Urban Dictionary: “A mysterious group of prophetic gentlemen that hide in the
shadows and wait for unsuspecting older women.” Something he
could identify with.
This song is also
the only track we are aware of that has inspired a charcoal based underarm
deodorant powder called “The Guv’nor” designed by Simon E’s
bird watching companion, record label partner, Lush founder and radical
perfumer Mark Constantine. The band are proud to stand in a line of
song/deodorant collaborations going back to ‘Smells Like Tean
Spirit’ by Nirvana. Free samples will be available on request.
2 Captain’s Apprentice – SR was at a JO’s gig during early stages of
writing material for the album:
SR
“Jackie
sang the CA and I instantly felt it could be connected to NYT as a spooky intro
to an equally ghostly story all about murder at sea. She learnt the song from
the singing of Kathryn Roberts. At the same gig, Jackie performed a series of
Cornish dance instrumentals which later became the basis for Winter
Singing”
3 New York Trader – SR: “ NYT is a
proper example of a tune’s development process through band input. I
wrote the original 5/4 track – it was a slow and gentle piece based
around a guitar figure and chilled beats. EC heard this and suggested the trad
song ‘New York
Trader’ would fit perfectly as it’s also in 5/4. She then sang it
in 4/4. AG and AF came to do the rhythm track and took it into the double-time,
10/8 feel. Simple, really…”
So now you know. We
then took the whole arrangement to our pre-tour rehearsals where the strings
and fiddle riffs were worked out. NYT is a great example of us developing an
arrangement to support the narrative of the lyric - in this case a harrowing
ghost story based on the old superstition that a ship is cursed if its captain
has committed murder. Right from the moment the tune went up-tempo, SE wanted
to try brass on it, so called up his old mates from the Kick Horns, who he had
worked with whilst producing Baaba Maal and Femi Kuti. This was the final
session of the album, days before they started mixing. We used to start our
live set with CA and NYT as a perfect opener, introducing to our audience our
new singer JO.
4
Bending The Dark –
SM’s PRS 20/12 Olympic Commission. The title came from a typo; the
original was ‘Bending the Da’, the Da being the 6th note in the
Indian Scale. But like all good mistakes it stuck. An epic written and
conceived by SM – the rest of us did what we could do to be equal to the
task of getting the piece completed. The two key hushed moments of the piece
focus on MC’s playing of a trad figure transposed into a very untrad key
Sheema found buried in the mix of a rejected album instrumental. She had heard
MC play the tune in sound checks and had always wanted to use it to kick-start
a bigger composition. AG took the final drum section away from the arena of ‘world
music’ and evoked the teen beat don Sandy Nelson, not to mention the
swing era big band feel of Louis Prima and Gene Krupa. The dramatic drum battle
between AG and JK was one of the most lively and exciting moments in the
recording session in London’s
Strongroom studio.
Produced, written
and arranged primarily by SM, the tune, in all its different twists and turns,
provides a showcase for many of the different elements of The Imagined Village.
The band felt this was a fitting piece to become the album’s title track.
5
Fisherman – SR
wrote the music, with a working title of “Something Brassy about the
North”. Naturally he turned to EC with her deep, northern heritage, to
come up with a suitable lyric. She instead wrote a song about the protest
movement and occupation of St Paul’s
Cathedral – not 5 miles from SR’s London home. The lyrics address the general
absence of non-material, altruistic – spiritual, even - leadership in the
present day. EC’s stunning chorus harmonies are complemented by the brass
arrangement giving it the expansive filmic quality of York’s most famous son John Barry
– born, as it happens, just down the road from Eliza.
6
Nest – SR wrote the music.
SR and SE started to write a lyric about parental paranoia and the Internet but
it didn’t seem to work. The piece sat in limbo for a while. Chris Wood
had a go but didn’t succeed. The music was waiting for the right moment
and feel – hence EC nailing it in November 2011 during an album recording
session at the studio of her cousin, Olly Knight. It was at his studio in Robin Hoods
Bay, place of the Carthy
family enclave, that MC walked in from doing the washing up at his house next
door, laid down a perfect vocal, and went home across the road again to finish
the dishes. Later on in Dorset, MC would bring
haunting guitars to the piece as well. BMB played a sublime cello solo late in
the day at a session in Bath
to record JO’s final vocals.
7
Wintersinging – JO played the fiddle motif based on a Cornish 5/4 dance
known as a Kabm Pemp. SR wrote a backing
track around it and the 2 Simons wrote a chorus and lyric about celebrating
solidarity at a period of darkness and not letting hard times overcome our
spirit. The lyric seemed to fit the times and what the band was going through.
SE: “We were holed up in our West Dorset Studio, winter
was closing in and people were taking to the streets across Europe
as the recession was deepening”.
The song was
originally a fairly full-on electronic arrangement with a Drum and Bass feel.
AG insisted on trying out a lighter, gentler feel for the drums, and this
approach of using the programmed beats to inspire and eventually be replaced by
live performance became a kind of template for the album.
SR: “It was like starting with a re-mix and then
creating the original song after.”
Eliza wanted more
blokes singing on the chorus to give it weight and stop it sounding ‘too
hippy dippy’, so we got in the lads from the Essex band Mawkin who
aren’t hippish by any stretch of the imagination, plus Steve Knightley
and Jim Causley who just happened to be in the studio on that day working with
Mawkin. An anthemic chorus was born. The band performed the track on the Radio
2 2day live session from Maida Vale in June 2011.
8
Sick Old Man –
Originally a guitar-based backing with a dub step feel written by SE, it was
always intended to cover ground not usually heard in conventional folk
composition – the bluesy crushed notes and more open 9ths were an attempt
to move away from the open C tuning that both Chris Wood and Martin use, and
get into some weirder chord shapes. EC wrote the allegorical lyrics based
around the trad piece “Raggle Taggle Gypsies” but took the song
into the 21st century, with its tale of England’s squandered
resources and growing intolerance of immigrants. SR programmed a Drum and Bass
feel for the track before the piece went through a series of rhythmic
developments. In rehearsal for live performance the tune finally settled into
its present arrangement.
9
Get Kalsi –
SE approached JK for some percussion ideas for an Imagined Village Bhangra style
track. JK sent over some of his tabla and dhol recordings and SR built these
into a groove around a synth pattern. AG and AF fleshed it out into the break
beat/drum and bass feel it now has. Whilst recording the plucked fiddle riffs
at CW’s studio SE wrote the top line as a tribute to one of his favourite
genres of traditional music: the English film score. It just happened to be the
40th anniversary of Get Carter, a film often identified by Roy
Budd’s distinctive tabla, electric piano and harpsichord theme tune. SM
wrote the introduction’s bravura musical flourish, bringing the whole
Anglo/Asian feel of the piece into focus. Another tune that got it’s 1st
radio airing on the BBC Radio 2 “2day live” Maida Vale session in
June 2011 prompting a huge amount of public feedback and interest
10
Washing Song –
Originally a purely trad song that had caught AG’s ears during sound
checks, and that EC brought to the studio as an arrangement for fiddle,
accordion and vox. It didn’t seem to quite sit as a piece on an IV album,
so at a recording session late in the album’s development, AG suggested
there might be a way to re-think the song. SR and AF worked on re-voicing and
re-writing the song’s chordal and bass harmonies. The result creates a
powerful contrast as the tune moves from the opening feel of Saul Rose’s
accordion and Eliza’s fiddle into the warmth of the double bass and piano
underneath the vocals.
Produced by Simon
‘Palmskin’ Richmond
and Simon Emmerson with band input. Apart from BTD, produced by Sheema
Mukherjee.
Album written,
arranged and performed by The Imagined Village
Mixed by Paul Grady
with the 2 Simons
ANDERSON, MCGINTY, WEBSTER, WARD, AND FISHER
DEBUT ALBUM RELEASED 14TH MAY
Anderson,
McGinty, Webster, Ward, and Fisher are a swarthy batch of young cronies
made up from the parts of Dundee’s recent hot bands - The Law, Luva
Anna and The Lost Todorovs. Their secret is a blend of enigmatic
songwriters and singers thrown together into one melting pot.
Described
as a breath of fresh air, both musically and in their approach to their
audiences, they maintain a humour and humility that many bands just
cannot harness. The line up of instrumentation they employ hints at the
unusual sound they have harnessed – bazooki, mandolin, harmonium, double
bass, autoharp – the list goes on. Folk, hip-hop, rock and country are
not genre’s that are normally associated with just one band.
Since
August 2011, they have been quietly refining their live set and
preparing their eponymous debut album release. Recorded almost
completely live in just 3 days it is the first release mixed at the
brand new Gardyne Studios in Dundee by Mike Brown. The album was
launched in spectacular style with a groundbreaking multimedia gig at
the Gardyne Theatre in Dundee on Saturday the 28th of January.
http://www.facebook.com/AndersonMcGintyWebsterWardandFisher
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