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FERNHILL Amser Disgyfrith CD03
There’s been quite a lot of fuss lately about the blos- soming of Welsh music in its many and varied guises and, yes, it’s about time too so we’ll all dunk a daffodil to that. But while we’re at it, let’s hail an Essex lass who has done more than most to
explore, nurture and drive on the music of her adopted country.
Julie Murphy’s work has grown increas- ingly ambitious in recent times, notably with her Quiet House solo album followed by her collaborations with Jim Causley setting Charles Causley’s poetry to music. But Fernhill – in which we now find her combining with Christine Cooper on fiddle and vocals, Tomos Williams on trumpet and, of course, Ceri Rhys Matthews on guitar – will surely always be her primary focus and this new album is a beauty: considered, lo-fi, explorative and softly compelling.
Fernhill have always actively avoided the obvious and their challenging intent is mag- nificently portrayed at the outset as they use The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset as the root of a jazzy, scat-singing meander that sets the tone for a collection that ebbs and flows into numerous unexpected tributaries.
It’s hard to categorise any of it – and why would you want to? – as we take in Thomas Hardy, Barbara Elin, American dance music, Welsh literature, poetry, the spoken word and plenty of their own material on an album set up as a watery voyage, albeit one of time rather than place. At the heart of it all, the magnificent voice of Julie Murphy acts as our beguiling guide, so quietly arresting you daren’t take your ears off it for a second. Christine Cooper’s fiddle will occasionally whip it along with striking insistence (Com- mendacions), the Tomos Williams trumpet is an impudent foil (Gwashel) and the Matthews’ guitar paints key shapes so discreetly at base camp you barely notice it entering the fray (the arrangement of Blino Ar Fath Blaned is a masterclass in understatement).
Fernhill
The centrepiece is the eight-minute title track, which encompasses that great old ritu- al song The King in a striking blend of tradi- tion and originality that comes out sounding like a playlet. Storytelling, in fact, is the key and it matters not a jot whether or not you understand Welsh. That sumptuous voice and those surprising yet empathetic arrange- ments are clear enough.
www.fernhill.info Colin Irwin
STICK IN THE WHEEL Bones EP Self released
I’ll admit that the first I’d heard of Stick In The Wheel was when Owl Service founder and Stone Tape Recordings head honcho Steven Collins declared them to be “the best thing to hap- pen to English folk music for decades”, on our fR Face-
book page. Not being the kind of chap to let a claim like that pass by without investigation I eagerly grabbed a looky-listen.
Stick In The Wheel are Ian Carter, Nicola Kearey and Fran Morter and their “intent,” they tell us, “is to perform folk music not as bland retroism or empty nostalgia, but as a voice linking now to then”.
All The Things and Poor Old Man are fine original songs, both full of memorable, dis- quieting lyrical imagery and solid melodies, propelled by an urgent, insistent resonator guitar which also closes the EP with an atmo- spheric (and unlisted) instrumental. But it’s the two traditional songs here which provide the real surprises – a searing, accusatory Four Loom Weaver and an astonishing, Poly Styrene-esque Bedlam, which usurps Steel- eye’s long-familiar and rather jolly version with a “raw aggressive howl of pain”.
Everything is delivered live-and-direct,
with no faffing about or studio trickery. Like punk rock, skiffle, jug bands or, indeed, Joseph Taylor singing Brigg Fair, this is DIY music of the most visceral kind. While it’s tempting to look for an antecedent in Chum-
Stick In The Wheel
bawamba’s English Rebel Songs 1381–1984, this record actually reminds me more of the spirit of the first Incredible String Band LP insomuch as both exude total commitment to the songs, and an utter and wholly refreshing lack of self-consciousness in their delivery.
While this record doesn’t declare any kind of call-to-arms it does seem to carry the polite suggestion that ‘middle-of-the-road’, might actually just be a polite way of saying ‘in-the-bloody-way’. That nice Mr Collins isn’t often wrong, you know…
stickinthewheel.com Steve Hunt
VARIOUS ARTISTS Vintage Balkan Beats JSP Records JSP5401
The small print on the reverse of the rudimentary jewel case appears to apolo- gise: “This is not an album of full-on, frenetic, drum- machine driven dance music normally referred to as Balkan Beats. It’s not even the actual tracks that have
been sampled and updated by modern Balkan Beaters. No – this is the real thing!”
But the (apparently) targeted audience of Balkan Beats hipsters, devoted in the main to remixes of contemporary sources from the for- mer Yugoslavia, will surely raise eyebrows at what is actually a fine introduction to raw and early rembetiko music. While JSP are rightly renowned for their boxes of rare and precious blues, jazz, country and gospel, their equally impressive sets of rembetiko (and other East- ern European music), drawn largely from with- in the genre’s interwar time constraints, have been somewhat overlooked. So here are twen- ty yearning tracks lifted from the scratchy streets and 78rpm records of long ago, stories of urban and personal decay presented through deceptively simple and elegantly decadent arrangements. The whole is a tragic, enthralling and manic listen, of folk motifs and honest gloom, exciting violin improvisa- tions, pulses of oud, and longing vocals from the end of the world and the night.
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