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(which also featured one of Sean’s heroes, Julie Tippetts). The approach was a laissez-faire one; Martin sent Rachel and Sean electronic backing tracks and simply asked then to do what they fan- cied. “It opened up beyond the folk remit,” Sean says. “It took us into anoth- er territory, which we both love.”
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The Rapunzel & Sedayne approach to music walks a very fine, deliberate balance between the gaping realm of the avant- garde and a tight, respectful homage to tradition. “The first thing is the source,” explains Sean. He cites the Max Hunter archives as a font for their research. “There’s variations of songs and ballads on there that just beggar belief. I was looking for The Cruel Mother one night and I found this recording by Pearl Brewer, from about 1959. [Her version comprises] only about five stanzas, but she is singing the very essence of what that ballad is. I was in the house on my own, it was dark, and the wind was howling. The song absolutely scared the shit out of me.” Sean is inspired by spontaneous singing in the manner of Brewer, seeing it in a lineage with free improvisation like David Bailey, and noted jazz-based experimenters such as Sun Ra and Don Cherry. Both Sean and Rachel respond to the free exchange of individu- alism and tradition.
This fused with their interest in field recording, especially in unusual surround- ings. “It becomes a ceremonial interaction with the environment,” Sean says. “We record a lot of stuff in churches. You’re walking on these Elizabethan tiles, and there’s no sense of the modern there. You’re dealing with the dust of ages in a very immediate sense.” There are few places that Sean sees as off-limits. “We once recorded a whole album in old tar containers on the banks of the Tyne,” he says. “You were risking your life, but the acoustics were fantastic.”
Over the years, Sean added to the lit- tle flute given to him by his grandfather and has built up quite a compendium of instruments – including the citera, doromb, goose pipe, seljefloyte (willow flute), and kaossilator. “I always say because my brother was a guitarist I decid- ed to play everything but the guitar,” he says. The crwth, a medieval bowed lyre, has been a particular longstanding favourite. “The crwth was made for me, way back, in about 1983. Both my crwths predate the crwth revival, so now I’ve got people looking at me askance, thinking ‘that’s not a proper crwth.’” More recently, he’s been playing the kemence. “It’s this tiny hand-held fiddle which literally hangs off your thumb when you play it. I wanted a fiddle for when I was storytelling in the woods.” Rachel plays banjo, guitar, harmo- nium and frame drum.
Working under the name Venereum Arvum (meaning ‘field of pleasure’), Sean and Rachel released A Pentacle Of Pips on the Reverb Worship label in 2010 in an edi- tion of just 50. This album features five lengthy tracks, traditional songs pulled by phantom limbs. Venereum Arvum’s extem- porisation is feral, scratching at the limits of folk, while remaining deftly respectful to the source material. “It isn’t weirdness for the hell of it,” he says. “I like that very naturalness of what music can be. It’s like
n early project for Rachel and Sean was with improvisational musician Martin Archer and poet Geraldine Monk on the 2002 album Angel High Wire
folk outside of a straightjacket.” While effective as a complete album, A Pentacle Of Pips is also a document of a work in progress, a proving ground that matured into 2011’s album Songs From The Barley Temple, released under the name Rapun- zel & Sedayne.
Songs From The Barley Temple is one
of the year’s best. The album’s attitude is summed up in True Thomas: finding a few verses missing from the source they used, Rachel and Sean decided to work with the incomplete version, in order to prioritise imagery over narrative. “Someone said to me that we were breathing life into these songs,” Sean says. “And I completely dis- agreed. It’s quite the opposite. You’re wanting to breathe the life of the song, because they’ve got more life in them, these songs, than I would ever want to breathe into them.”
Indeed, the tracks on Songs From The
Barley Temple are very intuitive, the songs inhabiting the souls and voices of the duo; its there in the elegiac original Riverdance as much as the weathered The Owld Grye Song. Robin Redbreast’s Testament, which appeared in a protracted version on A Pen- tacle Of Pips, is another highlight; here it is tighter, yet more shadowy and tormented. Porcupine Song creates a parallel between indigenous wildlife and indigenous song. “We’re very involved with various zoos and our favourite is our local zoo. They’ve got porcupines there, who look out very determinedly,” says Sean. “You’ve got these non-native animals up non-native trees, and you think about how this trans- lates into music. For instance, you’re tak- ing something that derives from an old- time, American music, and you’re very much on English soil. That whole notion of cultural purity goes out of the window.”
However, although the songs are
tauter, Rachel and Sean’s basic approach did not change across the two albums. Both were recorded live and had the improvisational approach at their core. Songs From The Barley Temple was mixed
and edited at their house, using basic equipment. “We always insist on recording our songs live,” Sean says. “The really important thing is the harmony between our voices that Rachel and I have devel- oped over the years. And, for that sort of intuition to work Rachel and I have always got to be looking at each other. It sounds like a really sloppy thing to say, but with- out the eye contact, it doesn’t work.” Recording live is also important in captur- ing the sense of document that is so important to the duo. “We’re recording a moment in time, a spontaneous occur- rence. It’s never going to happen that way again. Everything comes out of the imme- diacy. And you’re dealing with traditional songs, which in themselves are product of a similar immediacy.”
lthough A Pentacle Of Pips and Songs From The Barley Temple are their only actual released albums together, Rapunzel & Sedayne – under a number of guises and aliases – have been keen contributors to innovative projects. These include John Barleycorn Reborn, the 2007 compilation that showcased the British modernist dark folk underground, 2002’s Infernal Proteus, a collection of songs and writings inspired by vegetation and, most recently, Oak Ash Thorn, re- interpretations of Peter Bellamy’s settings of Rudyard Kipling poems.
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The Rapunzel & Sedayne project does not have a coherent gameplan. “I don’t think you should have an agenda for music,” Sean says, “because what’s your agenda for life?” He pauses, and laughs. “Actually, I think I might have come up with the same speech at school to my careers advisor.”
www.folkpolicerecordings.com/ rapunzel--sedayne.html
You can still get the limited edition
Venereum Arvum album A Pentacle Of Pips as a download from
http://rapunzelandsedayne.bandcamp.com
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