muddymaterial-blog

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“The speaker (player, performer) begins with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied but integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds upon itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation.”

M. H Abrams on Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1965). "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric". Oxford University Press. pp. 527–8.

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Sounds of: Retreat Space and Adaptation

☼ The Head ~ The Incredible String Band (taken from ‘God’s Holiday’) / performed live here. (still below)

“Only a palace with interior doors / Well painted well gargoyled with multiple floors / Two windows let free this projector machine / And the magical world here appears on the screen / My servants attend me with tricks of the senses / The past and the future and similar tenses.”

~

☼ Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending ~ The Incredible String Band. 1970.

[A film intended to be a ‘straight laced’ documentary - shot by the BBC - that turned into a theatrical excavation of the bands ethos/influences - 1:28+ an aural collection/set list for performance - akin to a Georges Perec text, to unravel/exhaust/understand the subject]

> The Pirate and the Crystal Ball pt.1 + pt.2

☼ Liege & Lief + Full House ~ Fairport Convention. 69′ + 70′.

>> Who Knows Where the Time Goes - doc ~ BBC. 2012.

[21:32 Short section that details Fairport’s turn to traditional folk tunes for inspiration / 28:54 Folk Library linked with Cecil Sharp: English Folk Dance and Song Society / 30:50 Liege & Lief & Tam Lin - a meeting of (past) traditional lyric and powerful presence of contemporary instrumentation / 36:47 duelling instruments - a literal illustration of above]

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☼ A Sailor’s Life (REF) ~  Henry Hills (coll. by W. Percy Merrick in 1899)

>> Fairport’s adaptation of A Sailor’s Life on their second album ‘Unhalfbricking’ (69)

[Introduced to the rest band by new vocalist Sandy Denny, who may have picked up the song through other adaptations by Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick (66) or Judy Collins (61)]

>> Sandy Denny

☼ A Selection of English Folk Songs (1960) ~ A. L. Lloyd 

>> A Selection From The Penguin Book Of English Folk Songs (1985) ~ Various Artists

[An important compendium of folk song. all of the songs featured on the 85′ album were taken from the ‘collected songs in the penguin book of english folk songs’ edited by Ralph Vaughn Williams and A. L. Lloyd - important archivists alongside Cecil Sharp]

↓

☼ Cecil Sharp’s Collections 

>> Other collectors to look into: Sabine Baring-Gould, James Madison 

☼ Tam Lin, Tamlyn and Young Tambling REF

“We haven't all that many fairy ballads, and this (Tam Lin) is by far the finest. It's fairly venerable, it was already printed on a broadside in 1558, and it wasn't new then. It seems to be uniquely Scottish, though there are international folk tales that come near its story; a Greek tale considerably more than two thousand years old tells how Peleus, wanting to marry the sea-nymph Thetis, lay in wait for her in a cave and seized her as she came riding in naked on a harnessed dolphin. She turned herself successively into fire, water, a lion, a snake, even to an ink-squirting cuttlefish, but Peleus “held her tight and feared not”, and in the end she gave in and the Olympian gods all came to the wedding.” ~ A. L. Lloyd’s liner notes

[the greek myth is fucking crazy and shouldn’t be referenced lightly but it keeps popping up in many forms.] 

  >> Fairport’s adaptation & lyrics

  >> Steeleye Span’s version

[An introduction to protean thinking/being - and a notable moment/space in which a folk past and electric present met]

↓

☼ I Bid You Good Night [REF]

> Five Variants on “I Bid You Goodnight”

“The way in which folk tunes would appear, in slightly different versions (often as settings for completely different worlds) in various parts of the country was a source of fascination for Vaughan-Williams and the other composers and musicologists who were busily collecting tunes.”

> A Very Cellular Song ~ The Incredible String Band. 68.

> Music Is Rapid Transportation ~ Bill Smith.  p164. 2010.

“Weaving between styles as divergent as Bahamian funerary music, East Indian incantation and ancient Celtic mysticism, 'A Very Cellular Song' represents a high point in the band's creativity. Handclaps, kazoo, harpsichord and pipes intermingle and morph into each other. If this sounds like dissonance and chaos, it is.”

☼ Fairport & Electric Folk: Faber Forty-Fives 67′ - 70′ - Rob Young

“Think of Fairport Convention as an old county mansion, its entrance and exit doors permanently open to successive tenants who have passed through, stayed, abandoned it and returned. Some have lived there for most of their lives, some are new, some come knocking on the door again after a turn of travelling out in the world. Each new set of inhabitants may refurbish rooms; the exterior might become a little shabby sometimes; but it’s never quite allowed to tumble in ruins. And the house has now been standing for so long that a whole community has sprung up around it.” pp. 2

[a ritualised space - coming and going - that reforms, redecorates itself around those who engage with it.] 

An Orgy on the Green

(reference the incred string band place + other spaces folk people bought up + change pic below)

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Texts on: A Journey and Muddy Objects

☼ The Taste of Earth ~ Uzma Z. Rizvi

“There is something deeply intimate about savouring a landscape, tasting the soil. What makes that act cannibalistic is also the same that makes it so very sensual. It is about recognising through my senses both being and belonging. My tongue becomes a landscape through which I am held accountable for my assumptions.”

☼ Field Notes from the Anthropocene: Living in the Back Loop (2017) ~ Stephanie Wakefield

“…these glaciers are the archives of our earth, the memory of its worlds, of past climates and of breaths released. During past ice ages, glaciers formed as water evaporated from the oceans, snow accumulated and compressed, layer built upon layer. Under the weight of accumulating seasons, the lower snow became ice, formations became glaciers, and ancient air was preserved, trapped as bubbles within the ice… The ice of memory becomes a deluge! It’s waiting for us!”

[A cave, a storage space, of compacted time. Through exploration or ‘mining’ is opened and understood]

> The Midnight Parasites (1972) ~ Yoji Kuri

[the loop or cycle, coming from, returning to]

> Flamingo Boogy (1973) ~ Richard Provotin

[a spliced cave creation story]

☼ The Garden of Peculiarities ~ Jesús Sepúlveda

“Ideology crystallises itself like a map. This map, however, is false—it portrays the world as a mental creation, a stage constructed over the base of the gears of productivity: the gearing is the material and ideological bubble in which the so-called political and economic systems of eco-social domination exist. Ideology justifies itself with the false idea that this is a happy and viable world, and that, despite its shortcomings, it is better to close your eyes to accustom yourself to survival and to avoid any disruption of the dream. When a person dreams, the nightmares cease and fantasy flowers. This can be, however, highly subversive, because in addition to letting the imagination fly, dreams erase narratives and turn the maps upside down, disposing of them in fetid waste-dumps.”

☼ An Inexhaustible Goodwill: From Leaves To Politics ~ Chus Martinez. 2017

> The Secret Life of Plants (1979) ~ Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird

> BARBAPAPA Ep. 01 ‘La naissance de Barbapapa’ ~ Annette Tison and Talus Taylor

“With a few shape-shifting and a brilliant imagination, he smoothly overcomes the most difficult situations! He is always ready to help. His goodwill is inexhaustible.”

☼ Erewhon or Over the Range ~ 

☼ The Pilgrim’s Progress ~ John Bunyan

“quote”

[Part I being a journey centred on one, Part II being the collective story, encompassing the family, the collective or group]

☼ Itinerarium Curiosum (ed. 1) + Itinerarium Curiosum (ed. 2) ~ William Stukeley

“…hence you see far into the isle of Thanet and Ramsgate-cliff, nam’d from the Romans, thrusting its chalky promontory into the sea. At present there is only a farm-house or two, standing on an elevation in the marshes. They inform’d me that here had been a great city, and that they can discover all the streets when the corn is on the ground, and those streets are nothing but pure gravel laid very deep. innumerabl stones and foundations have been dug up, but now mostly evacuated, and no doubt Sandwich was built out of it. Perhaps the city its self was an island.”

[scroll to bottom of text for description]

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☼ Surface Noise (2017) ~ Damon Krukowski

“When the catalogers of unintended noises listen to Beach Boys records, they listen between the notes. We might call it thick listening, alert to the depth of the many layers in multitrack recording. They listen through the surface noise of the LP, through the hiss of the master tape, through the layers of the music itself all the way back to the room in which it was played, where two horn players are standing and chatting... In other words, they are listening to more than the signal of the music—they are listening to the signal framed and enriched by noise.”

> Noises and Oddities in Beach Boys Recordings

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 Material on: Forming a Cave, Re-enactment, Mimesis & Space

☼ A Larp Dictionary  ~ John H. Kim. 2007.

[notable entries: Traditional Larp, Lajvien, bleed ]

☼ This Is a Game: A (very) Brief History of Larp ~ Paul Graham Raven. 2012

“...doing what they call 'living history', where old skills and ways of life are revived as part performance, part play, all wrapped up in authentic period costumes.”

> Leaving Mundania ~ Lizzie Stark

[ Worth looking into ‘nordic larps’ in particular Emma Wieslander’s ‘Mellan himmel och hav’ ("Between Heaven and Sea". 2004.) ]

“not all Nordic larps bear such a clear resemblance to the mainstream forms of the game, or indeed such a mimetic resemblance to consensus reality. The Nordic methodology — which often includes a preliminary 'workshop' wherein the players are prepared for the game, perhaps with a discussion of history or politics pertinent to the larp in question, and a 'debriefing' that seeks to integrate the game experience and cushion the come-down of returning to reality — allows for set-ups and scenarios that reframe the human experience in dramatically powerful contexts.”

>  ‘Mellan himmel och hav’ ("Between Heaven and Sea"). Emma Wieslander. 2004.

☼ States of Play: Nordic Larp Around the World ~ v/a 

> Valokaari: The Magnificent Failure ~ J. Tuomas Harviainen. pp.62

“[E]nvision you are running an Ally McBeal larp and then realize your players have chosen to play it like Law & Order. The subject matter of 'law' remains, but emphasis is very different”

☼ Transmitting a Political Vision Through Larp ~ Peter Munthe-Kaas. 2011.

> Jeepform

> Portraying Love and Trying New Genders ~ Emma Wieslander. 2011.

> Playground Worlds ~ Montola, Stenros . 2008.

☼ Participate Don’t Dominate: An Interview with curator and activist Ben Vickers ~ Alexander Scrimgeour

“I don’t want art history to feel like a graveyard when you walk through it, I want it to be possible to recreate for yourself the energy that was there in the present.”

☼ Last Edition ~ Threatre Union (Miller, Littlewood). 1940.

“Intuitively in synch with Benjamin’s definition of epic theatre which ‘proposes to treat elements of reality as if they were elements of an experimental set up’ (1998, p. 99), Theatre Union was engaged in the creation of a didactic theatre whose 8 subject was what Brecht called ‘the world as it changes (and also how it may be changed)’ (1936, p. 507).” p.8

[Miller aka. Ewan McColl]

> An Actor Prepares ~ Konstantin Stanislavski. 1939. 

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☼ The Dress and Undress of the Kibbo Kift Kindred ~ The Costume Society. 2015.

“If you had happened through the woods and country lanes of the south east of England on any weekend in the 1920s, you might have chanced upon a striking group of hikers dressed in Lincoln green hooded cloaks and jerkins, singing songs of their own composition...”

[further reading here]

☼ What is Historically Informed Performance? ~ SoHIP

“Historically Informed Performance… at its most basic level, means performing music with special attention to the technology and performance conventions that were present when a piece of music was composed. The most important element of historical performance is the musical style, which is ideally based on a knowledge of primary sources and other reference materials from the era of the music being performed”

☼ Reminiscences of folk instrumental practice in Chopin's piano music ~ Professor Zbigniew J. Przerembski

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☼ Wadada Leo Smith’s Improvised, Ritualised, Performance Spaces ~ Interview /w Bomb Magazine. 2015.

“...when they stepped on that diamond stage of a performance space, which is a ritualised space, they all became somebody else.”

☼ Treatise ~ Cornelius Cardew 

“Bear in mind that parts of the score may be devoid of direct musical relevance.”

> A (Guardian) Guide to C.C 

[none of the links on the article work some i’ve included some here...]

> Treatise ~ Cardew (in full, animated score)

> Sonic Youth’s Treatise (page 187) 

> Revolution is the Main Trend ~ Cardew (1974) - (perf. Fausto Bongelli)

> Croppy Boy & Others ~ Cardew 

☼ Towards an Ethic of Improvisation ~ Cornelius Cardew (1971 - from "Treatise Handbook")

“Do not be troubled by the fact that languages a. and b. consist only of orders. If you want to say that this shews [sic] them to be incomplete, ask yourself whether our language is complete; - whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notations of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.” 

> Cardew on Folk Music ~ ???? (2010)

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Sounds of: a wider (referential) folk collection

☼ Death is not The End (2017) ~ A mix of selections from Romanian composer and ethnomusicologist Constantin Brăiloiu’s ‘World Collection of Folk Music’ archive, recorded between 1913 and 1953.

☼ Music from Saharan Cellphones (2011) - V/A (release by Sahel Sounds)

“In much of West Africa, cellphones are are used as all purpose multimedia devices. In lieu of personal computers and high speed internet, the knockoff cellphones house portable music collections, playback songs on tinny built in speakers, and swap files in a very literal peer to peer Bluetooth wireless transfer.”

☼ Mongolian flute singing / Mouth Flute ~ Artist Unknown

☼ Earth Horns With Electronic Drone (1974) ~ Yoshi Wada

“For this recording Wada assembled his self-made 20' and 10' horns at Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York. The spellbinding performance on four pipes revolves around a single drone attuned to the frequency of the space and its acoustic information, essentially recycling the low, bellowing sound of the pipes into a complex feedback loop of harmonic overtones and electronic oscillation.” (more here)

☼ Exploratorium Performance (2014) ~ Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe

“Aubrey Lowe pairs his voice, analog synthesisers and vegetative tones using Data Garden's MIDI Sprout, a ‘biodata sonification device’”.

☼ Talking Gongs (2017) ~ Floris Vanhoof

☼ The Simulated Australia (2016) ~ Spencer Clark

“...however reveals possible new meanings of our own world. Driven by simple observation and little interference, the normally sensationalistic world of field recordings becomes a simple vessel for aestheticizing reality. Yet the wave sounds, bird calls, and aquarium background music become a new world through Clark’s ears.”

☼ Campfire (2012) ~ Matthew De Abaitua & Richard Norris

☼ The Songs the Plants Taught Us (2011) ~ An aural document of authentic Ayahuasceros healing sessions and their hypnotic Icaros (or magical song). Recorded live in the field by Eduardo Luna.

Video Works

☼ The Modern Antiquarian (2004) ~ Julian Cope (the Arch-Drude): A megalithic road trip to accompany his 1998 book ‘The Modern Antiquarian’.

☼ Sky Heart (1988) ~ Dennis Pies aka. Sky David

☼ The Kinora Films (1912) ~ EFDSS : the earliest known examples of English folk dance on film)

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Other Resources

☼ The Modern Antiquarian

☼ New Geographies

☼ LARPages

☼ Skian Mhor (larp supplies)

☼ MIDI Sprout Forums

☼ Tam Lin Balladry

☼ Fresno Folklore

☼ Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

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