Suggestions
Suggestions
In Britain and Ireland, a new wave of dark folk takes traditional ballads, work songs and old myths toward drone, ritual and a darker reading of the islands’ history. Lankum and Brìghde Chaimbeul build long pieces on drones, from Lankum’s strings, organ and concertina to Chaimbeul’s Scottish smallpipes. Burd Ellen lay harmonium, chimes and incantatory vocals over traditional tunes, and Hack-Poets Guild turn old broadside ballads against present-day power. The mood has a precedent in the early 1970s, when Incredible String Band and Comus led a turn toward esoteric rural escapism through years of strikes and rising unemployment.
Norwegian songwriter Tony Gonzalez opens Velcro Dog’s “I’ll Stick to Fiction” on classical guitar and voice, then builds with Sunniva Smidt’s cello to a violent crescendo, writing about escape into fiction from what he calls a “slow-motion apocalypse”. Toronto singer-songwriter Clara Engel built “Dead Tree March” from a talharpa melody, a single chord on cigar box guitar and a mallet beating on a wooden trunk. The collaboration of trajedesaliva and Maud the Moth turned the paintings of Remedios Varo into an album of analogue synthesizers, acoustic instruments and many voices, and experimental artist Bartek Kuszewski based Rites of Fall’s “Floodwaters” on the flood myth and bleak, monumental tones.