Available
Root Folk Band
The Ritual Year O.s.t.
Between 2014-16, Folklore Tapes begun the series Calendar Customs, commissioning artists to research and respond
sonically to the four corners of the ritual year; May Day, Midsummer, Midwinter and Hallowe'en. This culminated in a
box-set of 4x LPs and accompanying extensive booklet with essay by FT pen smith Jez Winship. FT also produced a detailed
customs wall calendar and a cassette collaged using field recordings taken from amateur YouTube footage. In 2022 artist
and Dave Pearson archivist invited Folklore Tapes' David Chatton Barker to write a score to a new animation by Chinese
artist Kain Leo. The animation was commissioned to act as a creative extension to the Dave Pearson archive and website.
The Root Folk Band were a once fictional group found within the pages of the children's books Mossy. They were brought
to life for this unique project and its members are; Bridget Hayden, Mary Stark, Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton
Barker. The score was largely made ahead of the film, as Kain Leo prefers to work with the music during her editing
process. The first stage of writing the score saw the band collect together old folk custom sheet music and cut sections
out and re-paste to create new passages. These were first played using whistle and percussion. The Root Folk Band split
the recording between two locations, the first; an ex-telephone repeater station high up on Shap Fell, Cumbria and the
second; at a house in Cornholme, West Yorkshire. These sessions incorporated improvisation alongside the original music
drawn from the cut-up traditional scores.
Around 3 hours of material was recorded, played on a variety of traditional and self-built instruments. This material
was then cut-up and collaged into a 12 minute musical calendar and edited with field recordings taken from the 2016 FT
cassette.
Traversing the light and the dark months of the year across several hundred years of English ritual, the resulting score
is perhaps described as sitting sonically between the seminal soundtrack to the 1973 film 'The Wickerman' and the 2012
album 'Witch Cults Of The Modern Age' by Broadcast and the Focus Group. This limited edition seven-inch vinyl record
comes housed within a hand-made manilla sleeve, expertly screen printed at Small Press Studio in Stockport by Yasmin
Lever. Along with the 12 minute vinyl comes an A4 insert and download code and download link to the film.
Price
€ 13.95
Genre
Format
7inch - 1 disk
Release
15-04-2023
Label
Item-nr
534512
EAN
2090505345124
Availability
In stock