Albion’s Daughter - A Solstice Sunrise
(Source: youtube.com)
Our sixth album ‘Colours’ is released this week. Featuring the amazing talents of Liza Bec, Alex Bonney, Helene Bradley, Olie Brice, Howard Cottle, Hannah Caughlin, Sam Ewens, Tom Page, Fred Thomas, Nancy Wallace, John Andrews, Liam Bailey and Lisa Knapp.
As from today it is available on all digital platforms. Limited edition CDs and lathe cut vinyl will be available as private pressings from Friday 5th November. Thanks for listening!
The Black Notebooks: Goodbye to the Guvnor
Still reeling from the departure of Andrew Weatherall. More on this anon. But one wild thing this week is the treasure trove of memories and music that has been shared between friends, fans and family of the man himself. And this, from his confidant and studio partner Nina Walsh is one heck of a trove. Weatherall was not an internet person, to say the least, BUT he did use YouTube to collect his favourite songs - and here are no a load of playlists he put together.
To be released on the summer solstice 21st June 2019, a brand new seven inch single on Static Caravan.
The Memory Band was always conceived as a project that would develop it’s character over time rather than arriving pre-packaged and fully formed. The intention was to allow the work to be influenced by the diverse range of musicians who came aboard and the places we travelled to together and to meander along our own path. Fifteen years since our eponymous debut album on the Hungry Hill label this single features the voice of Nancy Wallace, who made her debut on that first album and whose presence had a profound impact upon the early navigations of The Memory Band both live and on record. A fine traditional singer Nancy has forged her own highly regarded solo career and as well her contributions to The Memory Band she also played a pivotal role in the formation of The Owl Service. Now resident in Canada, Nancy recently reunited with TheMemory Band whilst visiting Britain and recorded the title track After Night in London. The song uses lyrics assembled and adapted from a handful of ballads with similar lyrics but differing titles collected far and wide in the English-speaking world since the eighteenth century; songs such as Madam I Have Come to Court You, Yonder Stands a Lovely Creature; Twenty-Eighteen and Ripest Apples.Accompaniment on electric piano, organ and cello comes from Fred Thomas, who has made many contributions to recent work. The flipside is a cover of an Anne Briggs song entitledTangled Man from her classic album The Time Has Come and features acoustic guitar from John Smith.
Further to the piece I wrote for Caught by the River in February here is a video update by film-maker Pedr Browne.
This is the fifteenth year of The Memory Band’s existence and in all that time I have avoided commissioning a ‘proper’ video for our music until now, mostly because of the practical difficulties involved in finding a suitable goat. Having been so impressed by Pedr’s previous work and A Fair Field being completed I approached him about making a video. Pedr travelled to the area near Brooke in Norfolk which I wrote about in The Way Of The Hare, once the home of Albert Hupton and George Ewart Evans whose conversation in 1977 introduces our track ‘Starlight’. A goat was engaged from the one of the neighbouring villages and filming commenced.
The video takes me back to a landscape with “no dark hills in the distance, all features near, little sense of the beyond.” and the wondrous light I saw as I looked back towards Brooke on the road to Seething and Kirstead where I first spotted two hares in a field last year.
He Who Feeds The Raven – an unreliable account.
I have written another piece with an accompanying video for Caught By The River regarding a trip I made in search of the ghosts which inhabit our latest album ‘A Fair Field’. You can read it here
The Way Of The Hare
The second unreliable account written for Caught By The River regarding sites of specific interest to our latest album. http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2017/02/25/landscape-norfolk-george-ewart-evans-memory-band/
Field recording: The Memory Band’s Norfolk Before Dawn
The Great Outdoors
A feature which ran in the January edition of Electronic Sound magazine regarding the influence of field recording upon The Memory Band.
Songs are like Rivers.
‘The words of songs are different from words which make prose. In prose, words are independent agents; in songs they are first and foremost the intimate sounds of their mother tongue. They signify what they signify, but at the same time they address or flow towards all the words that exist in that tongue.
Songs are like rivers. Each follows its own course - yet all are flowing to reach the sea from which everything came. The waters that flow out of a river’s mouth are on their way to an immense elsewhere. And something similar happens with what comes out of the mouth of a song.’
John Berger 'Confabulations’
Singers and Players
In no particular order I’m going to post links and give credit to the
singers and players who weave their magic on ‘A Fair Field’.
My gratitude to them is immeasurable.
Fred Thomas, piano, keyboards and stunning arrangements.
Liam Bailey, composer. folk singer, astronomer and trickster.
Olie Brice, double and electric bass. Composer, improviser.
Helene Bradley, singer-songwriter, harmoniser.
Tom Page, drums, electronics, James Holden and Neneh Cherry
Hannah Caughlin, Wide Skies, The Accidental, songwriter, singer of soundtracks.
Lucy Railton, cello/ Composer, klammer klanger
Nancy Wallace, composer. Singer from across the ocean,
John Smith, guitar player extraordinaire.
The Land Of Spirit And Light
I’m listening this morning to the music of violinist Michael White, who has just passed on.In a week that has seen a lot of people talking about the music of 1989, news of his death has reminded how at that time I was listening to the kind of records that Michael and his contemporaries released on Impulse Records and other smaller independent labels in the late 60s and early 70s. Then I was a young student in London, invigorated by pirate radio, street markets and the network of clubs. bars and record shops in the capital where a whole World of exciting sounds awaited me. Some of it was new, but much of it was music from earlier times and sometimes faraway places, but fresh to my ears.
Now all these years later I am listening to Spirit Dance, the first album I bought from a relatively short lived jass record shop shop called Blue Monk on Turnpike Lane where I lived at the time. I bought my first Pharaoh Sanders album there too. I can hear what a profound impact those artists had on me and how audible that influence is on parts of the new album by The Memory Band.
So today I remember those who came before and count my blessings
Spotify
Our new album ‘A Fair Field’ is now available on spotify. To commemorate this portentious event we have created a new spotify playlist 'Our Navigations’ which will be regularly updated.