9. Early Recordings of the Copper Family of Rottingdean

 

All writ down rough 'n raw by the Copper old guard venerables. 

Oddi wrth y brawd

28. The Power of the True Love Knot - Shirley Collins [1967]

Quietly adventurous '67 recording by sisters Shirley and Dolly. Traditional love ballads with early music patina courtesie of Dolly’s restrained arrangements and flutey toned miniature wooden pipe-organ. Pristine Joe Boyd production and array of supporting off-kilter instruments ascendantal Wlliamson and Heron (a favour Dolly repays on Incredible String Band's God Dog).



So to Shirley’s voice: natural, artless and wholly inhabiting songs about “ladies fair and tender, the ballad-heroines with lily hands, riding through the night, sighing for love, wandering through meadows distracted, saving or losing their virtue, getting pregnant, eloping with gypsies, dying of remorse, twined in the True-Lovers Knot” [ sleeve notes – S.C.].

By the time of this recording, Shirley had already paired with Davy Graham to redefine the nature of folk accompaniment, and would go on to produce arguably the finest folk-rock album of the era with the Albion Country Band. Check guest vocal on Current 93’s 2006 Black Ships Ate the Sky: as harrowing as it is breath-taking.

Oddi wrth y brawd


[bonus in Comments]

29. Live at The Old Ash Tree, Kent 1972 - COB

Time entwines my very soul,

The tangled briar kills the tree

 - Music of the Ages, COB

Unutterably magical performance. Anachronistic, rough around the edges mantric lo-fi hypnotism; harmonium drone and homemade "dulcitar". Wyrd ur-text and more compelling than contemporaneous Incredible String Band output.

Music for the ages. Absolutely essential listening.


Oddi wrth y brawd [and Pagan Dad]


[bonus in Comments]

Os Mewn Sŵn - Huw M [2010]

Huw M[eredydd Roberts], delivers beyond everything we ever hoped for from solo Euros Childs. Personalised folk-ish paeans to the everyday: kitchen food smells, missing the train, a dripping tap, and er...the sock drawer.


First rate debut.

Buy Os Mewn Sŵn and spiffing new release Gathering Dusk. 

Oddi wrth y brawd

Gwymon - Meic Stevens [1972] re-dug

Clasur gan y cawr o Solfach

Having tried to please Warners with 1970's Outlander (the public wisely ignored the "Welsh Van Morrison" schtick), Meic goes on to please himself. Gwymon is more at ease with itself: rootsy and unforced; mix light-hearted stoned chooglers and weightier, heart-felt meditations on loss and passing. A true classic not to be missed.


New CD release on Sunbeam Records. Buy.




From Galactic Ramble:


"By the middle of 1972 Meic had amassed enough new songs to make another album - this time on his own terms. He still had access to Warner's demo studio in Denmark Street, so went there to tape the songs in the summer. Some were new, some had been written for Welsh TV shows (from topical to children's to religious), while others were older (like the flippant, infectious Carangarw, or 'Kangaroo', which Meic recalls '"was written in a London taxicab while stoned with Gary Farr and Reggie King"). Recorded in a single day after a night's rehearsal with a pair of musicians he'd met in a Soho pub (Paul Martinez and Graham Smith), and sung entirely in Welsh, the result was less mystical and more pop-orientated than Outlander, with a bouncy, uptempo feel (other than the obvious exception of the eerie ‘Galarnad’ - a setting of a passage from the Book of Jeremiah). Meic decided to call it Gwymon (‘seaweed’), and it appeared in September 1972 in an edition of 2500 vinyl copies."

Oddi wrth y brawd

Rise Up Like The Sun - The Albion Band [1978]

 

Fag end of 70s outing for Ashley Hutchings and Co.. Said company a solar line up comprising Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy, Dave Mattacks, John Tams, Philip Pickett, McGarrigle sisters, and er..Julie Covington. Something of a last huzzah for folk rock in classic UK vein. Joe Boyd produced...always a fair sign. Gruff saucy drone of Poor Old Horse a particular treat.

Oddi wrth y brawd

The Seed-At-Zero - Robin Williamson [2001]

Mr Williamson in full bardic splendour. Forging Dylan Thomas, Henry Vaughan, Llywarch Hen and Taliesin in the long time sun.

Oddi wrth y brawd

The Constant Pageant - The Trembling Bells [2011]

And proof, if any were needed,....

Oddi wrth y brawd

No Roses - Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band [1971]

Pinnacle of UK folk rock achievement. No contest. Essential.

Oddi wrth y brawd

Liquid Acrobat As Regards The Air - The Incredible String Band [1971]

These are the true troubadours of the last two centuries. They explore divinity and magick from a lyrical chivalric dimension. Combine this with the interdimensionality and you have works beyond compare. SUBLIME!

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

New York City, April 2004

And I shall dance for you,

The sweetest dance that I can do.

Likky

Final true entry in the canon. Worlds they rise and fall. Last thrilling, if poignant, outing for ham-fisted Heron sitar. Talking of painted chariots, Darling Belle and the end.

Oddi wrth y brawd

Farewell Sorrow - Alasdair Roberts [2003]

Sound of Roberts coming into his own; channelling spirit into quiddity. Achieves a kind of magic and elegance that Ashley Hutchings once managed so adeptly. Elegant.

Oddi wrth y brawd
walk abroad in an evil hour

Carols From Herefordshire - Sproatly Smith [2010]

Wyrd Christmas the first. Psych-folk for midwinter feasting.

Oddi wrth y brawd
the moon shines bright

Abandoned Love - Trembling Bells [2010]

Oh, classy R.Thompsonesque folk rockery pinned to Calvary cross oblivious with colliery brass band twist. 

Oddi wrth y brawd

pirates patrol the ports of yorkshire

Hearken To The Witches Rune - Dave and Toni Arthur [1971]

Yes, we stripped naked and danced round in a circle. But this was surprisingly unsexy.

 - Toni Arthur

...one of English folk's great lost recordings...they are abroad in the thick of night, squinting out of the midnight shadows, as if about to disrobe for a black mass. This collection of the magical ballads they were steeped in at the time - Alison Gross, The Standing Stones, The Cruel Mother - has the raw spontaneity of what they might have been like if incorporated in magic ritual.

 - Rob Young, Electric Eden

And more disturbing than witchcraft...

Oddi wrth y brawd

evil cant

Leaves From Off The Tree - Meg Baird, Helena Espvall and Sharron Kraus [2006]

Espers'  Meg n Helena team up with Sharron Kraus for front porch drink n laughter session. Expect spontaneity, heart and sounds outside time.  

Oddi wrth y brawd

not so silly sisters

No Earthly Man - Alasdair Roberts [2005]

Ancient murder balladry par excellence. Spectral hum of opener sets dark, disturbing tone: you'll travel long dusky roads to find a more imposing version of Lord Ronald, Carthy's Lord Randall included. Traditional songs all, complete with Child, Laws and Roud indices. Will Oldham sits in on three tracks, not so's you'd notice.

A towering, unpretentious talent, unfurling undeniable instinctive grace.

Oddi wrth y brawd

owlsnlion

And Now It Is So Early, Songs of Sydney Carter - Bob and Carole Pegg [1972]

Sydney Carter (1915 - 2004), folk poet, holy sceptic, gentle satirist, theological iconoclast and composer of two of the most popular songs sung in morning assemblies in British schools: One More Step and Lord Of The Dance. Neither appear on Bob and Carole Pegg's [ aka Mr Fox] collection of interpretations, though Lord of the Dance is covered on their contemporaneous He Came From the Mountain. 

(Sydney wrote Lord of the Dance in 1963, as an adaptation of Shaker hymn Simple Gifts featured in Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring. Sydney sees Christ as "the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality... I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.")


Bob and Carole present a mix of borderline street cabaret (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Doctor Spock) and wyrdly Christian (Come, Love, Carolling, Shake and Shiver, Judas and Mary). To these ears, it's the latter pieces that continue to resonate most fearsomely.


Fearless and declamatory, Friday Morning has the robber crucified with Jesus cry out: 

"It was on a Friday morning that they took me from my cell 

And I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well. 
You can blame it on to Pilate, you can blame it on the Jews, 
You can blame it on the Devil, it's God I accuse. 
It's God they ought to crucify, instead of you and me, 
I said to the carpenter a-hanging on the tree."

If any church comes close to holding Sydney's allegiance, it is the Society of Friends, with its rejection of dogma, and reliance on personal experience, social activism, and affirmation of God's presence in every human being. Suitably Morris flavoured closing track George Fox then is a canny choice. Fox toured the country giving sermons arguing the irrelevance of consecrated buildings and ordained ministers to the individual seeking God.


Sydney: "Bibles, legends, history are signposts: they are pointing to the future, not the past. Do not embrace the past or it will turn into an idol." Jesus is central, not "the official Jesus - but the Jesus who is calling you to liberty, to the breaking of all idols including the idol which he himself has become." 

01 Come, Love, Caroling

02 Run the Film Backwards
03 Glass of Water
04 Last Exit to Brooklyn
05 Up at the House of Cecil Sharp
06 Port Mahon
07 Shake and Shiver
08 The Holy Horses
09 Judas and Mary
10 Friday Morning
11 Doctor Spock
12 The Candlelight
13 George Fox

Oddi wrth y brawd

shut the Bible up and show me how

The Wicker Man - Paul Giovanni & Magnet [2002]

And now, for our more dreadful sacrifice.  Sumer is a-cumen in. Saints preserve us from the landlord's daughter. Mirie she is.


You have come of your own free will to the appointed place. The game is over.

(Herein, 2002 Silva Screen Records release: stereo version using cues from found tapes mixed with recordings from first Trunk Records 1998 release)


Oddi wrth y brawd
Come. It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man.

...And Then We Saw Land - Tunng [2010]

Less founding member and chief song-writer Sam Genders; less weird. Not necessarily a bad thing. ...And Then We Saw Land renews Tunng's acquaintance with electronic experimentation wrapped ever so neatly within a warped take on pastoral folk. Goodbye willful eccentricity, hello quirky pop melody mainstream. Tasteful. Tasty. 

Oddi wrth y brawd

hustle

At The Pure Fountain - Robin Williamson & Clive Palmer [1999]

On this CD my old friend - Incredible String Band founder member - Clive palmer and myself perform together for the first time in over 30 years. These are songs and tunes and the sort of songs and tunes we were doing as the duo Robin and Clive between 1962 and 1964 before the ISB began. The freshness and simplicity remain. The depth of experience is added. All the pieces are familiar and very meaningful to us. They have a lot to do with who we are.

 - Robin Williamson

Oddi wrth y brawd

salty dogs