This is a real-time improvisation on my Fender Telecaster Baritone (+ ebow, volume, Freeze pedals, Cathedral reverb & Ravish Sitar) 23rd December 2013 against a field recording made in York Minster a few days earlier on the 20th.

Being a working-class person of Northern Extraction I find myself cursed by a seemingly eternal deference to the higher echelons of the social elite which has been this nations abiding disgrace since the Norman Conquest and before.  So it is when the call to prayer comes over the York Minster PA in immaculate RP, my foot falters with the instinctive need to fling myself into the nearest ditch to show the necessary respect, but I nevertheless continue taking photographs (one such included here) convinced in my entrenched humility (inferiority complex coupled with an utter lack of self confidence that I can now own with due pride) that the voice of the Posh Bird is that of an angel addressing me personally.

The droning guitar solo is a gloss on this ambient sequence, and is not to be confused with the tuning of the York Minster organ which adds to a more pragmatic ambience than anything overtly 'musical' as such, which would have been anathema in this context of reactive superstition that dares speak of peace and justice.  

Happy Xmas.  Sedayne - Monday 23rd December 2013

York : Prayer & Pilgrimage (aka Cursed Deference) 20th & 23rd December 2013

This seems a good way to begin 2014, with an amoral song of lawless resolution, here sung as part of a real time improvisation (edited for duration) using the unholy trinity of Korg Volca Bass, Keys & Monotribe.  The 'Tribe sets the droning pace, the Bass loops with curlew sounds & the Keys goes through a cheapo Behringer digital delay which seems ideal for the task in this context anyway.  

I got the song from the singing of Thor Ewing in the old days, who probably got it from Ewan MacColl, who got it from A.L.Lloyd, who maybe had a hand in it somewhere down the line though there are enough citations for an ultimately Traditional provenance for those who wish to explore these things beyond the celebrity veneer, complete with Roud Number.  Either way, it's been part of my life for more years that I care to remember with fine renderings down the years from fellow floor-singers, such as Thor & John in Durham and Pete in Preston so its place in the seance of the Folk-geist is assured in perpetuity.

*

I am a brisk lad, my fortune is bad,
and I am most wonderful poor.
Indeed I intend my fortune to mend,
And build me a house down on the moor, my brave boys,
And build me a house on the moor.

The farmer he do keep fat oxen and sheep
And a neat little nag on the downs.
But in the middle of the night when the moon do shine bright
There's a number of work to be done, my brave boys,
There's a number of work to be done.

And I'll roam all around on another man's ground,
and I'll take a fat sheep for my own
And with the aid of my knife, I shall end of its life
And then I will carry him home, me brave boys,
I then I will carry him home.

And my children shall pull the skin from the ewe,
And I will be where there is none,
And when the constable do come I'll stand there with my gun
And I'll swear all I have is my own, my brave boys,
I shall swear all I have is my own.

The Sheep Stealer (AKA The Brisk Lad, Roud 1667) : 2.1.14

Real time improvisation (no dubs) recorded using my trusty Fender Baritone Telecaster + Volume Pedal, Ebow, Boss Looper, Tera Echo & Monotribe drone.

Vernal Raga : 30.3.2015

The last day of April 2015!  May tomorrow!  AND having being laid low by a nasty UTI since Sunday I at last feel well enough to at least DO SOMETHING by way of vibrant renewal in giddy anticipation of SUMMER.

So - undaunted, unedited & uncompressed, a real-time no-age improvisation in which the pulse drone is set by TWO MS-20 minis in B.  The Baritone Tele is in B, which is first heard & looped with a piece of Tibetan Quartz Crystal Glissando, and played thereafter with the Ebow + 2nd looper, VOX delay lab, tera echo & harmonist.

The picture is Duddo Stone Circle in Northumberland, taken round the solstice back in March. 4000 years old, it finds our ancestors looking up at the stars and asking WTF?  and, one hopes, finding wonder enough to keep asking it in the beautiful lack of answers.  Its mystery is one of enduring humanity - I see it as the direct antecedent of the Large Hadron Collider.  

Time was I'd be getting all pagan round about now with dreams of Beltaine, BUT the wondrously COMMON cosmic spiritually of simply being alive as STAR STUFF sweeps all that away.  So this I dedicate to the notion that once we do get to the point of realising that (say) GRAVITY is greater and more wondrous than any hocus-pocus bollox ever dreamed up by religion (i.e. God) then we can get on with the business of the greater reverence of true Cosmic Unity and start thinking of ourselves as AMAZING (without exception) so we might start nurturing & cherishing The Planet so that future generations can still find wonder and beauty here and keep asking of the cosmos : WTF???  

Sedayne - 30th April 2015.

The Last Day of April : 30.4.15

Unedited field recording of an improvisation on the harmonium in the ancient unused country church of St, Faith's, Little Witchingham in deepest, darkest Norfolk.

Saint Faith : 19.5.15.

Real-time improvisation playing Korg MS-20 & a baritone Fender Tele glissed with a lump of Tibetan quartz crystal - plus various FX & delays on both synth & guitar (including, for the first time, my new EHX C9).  First part of three, hence the title.  The music was inspired by some pictures taken on Holy Island in Northumberland one cold misty day back in March, but it's nothing too mystical, although the sacred sense of divine materialism pervades, but that's true of most things I suppose.   

TrIptych #1 : 16.6.15

A wee improvisation on a Vietnamese Jew's Harp (Dan Moi) in the Chapter House of Wells Cathedral as the choir prepares for Evensong in the distances.  The space is breathtaking, all the more to think that it featured in Pasolini's Canterbury Tales...   

Wells Chapter House : 24.7.15

Unedited real-time improvisation on my baritone Fender Telecaster + a couple of loopers and FX (Boss Tera Echo, EHX C9, Vox Delay Lab & Ebow) - no dubs.  For old long ago & the future of things past. 

Auld Lang Syne  : December 30th 2015

Real-time improvisational mood music inspired by waxing gibbous moon, clear sunny skies, sea gulls and an optimistic imminence of spring maybe.  Begins with random harmonics which are then looped for the underlying ostinato for the Ebow on the D string.  The picture I took the day before of a seagull sitting on a lamppost at the end of our street with the moon behind it.  What a wonderful world we could live in.  

Gull Moon Mood Thang  : Friday 18.3.2016

Real time improvisation with Gretsch electric guitar played with Ebow & copious FX + Volca Keys / Memoryboy & PO-12 / Monotron delay.  File under : Seasonal Affective Sonic Disorder.

AUTUMN HIPPY FLASHBAX :  11.9.17

This Middle English poem exists in various translations, the most celebrated of which can be found in The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson (Faber 1972), one of essentials of any folklore library.  Raymond Greenoaken first introduced this to me some 30 years ago (on the flyleaf of my original copy it says 25th of November 1982)  and it's been one of my bibles ever since, given my totemic hare status.  Raymond also used to perform The Names of the Hare as a solo performance piece to great comedic effect, but needless to say when I started doing it, I wasn't playing it for laughs, but saw it as a grave piece of shamanic faunal dreaming based on a litany of aspects and namings of great power that tied in with various other aspects of hare-lore as given in the pages of The Leaping Hare.  The most significant of these was the riddle from County Antrim - hopper of ditches, cropper of corn, a wee brown cow with a pair of leather horns - which remains my personal mantra to this day.

In September 2009 I recorded two very different versions for the second of  Coldspring's John Barleycorn Reborn anthologies and asked my wife to chose which one to contribute.  The first version (which features on the CD) is darkly dissonant amodality which layers voice, crwth, Jew's Harp and percussion in grand old style.  The second version is just me, solo, intoning the verses with my 17 string Medieval Anglo-Norman Hare Harp built for me by Tim Hobrough in 1981 (and pretty much identical to the one being played in the MS. Illumination that accompanies this track hence Hare Harp).  Needless to say Rachel went for the darker of the two, so this is the second one, a simple piece of hearth-side Bardic recitation by way of auld lang syne and dedicated to Dancing Jim Weatherspoon, Ragnerbone and the Ragwort Roadshow; and to Thor Ewing upon whose translation much of this is based. 

Sedayne - Medieval English Harp, Intoning voice, electro Shruti box & bells in real time.

*

The Names of the Hare

the man that should the hare meet will never come to have him beat 
unless he lay upon the ground that which he carries in his hand 
be it staff or be it bow and bless him with his elbow and with right good devotion 
he shall speak this orizon in honour of the hare
then will he better fare... 

a hopper of ditches / a cropper of corn / a wee brown cow / with a pair of leather horns / a hopper of ditches / a cropper of corn / a wee brown cow / with a pair of leather horns

the hare / the scutter / the big / the bouchart / the scuffler / the robber / the rascal / the racer / the way-beater / the hairless / the go-by-ditch / the grimer / the wimont / 

the bulger / the steal away / the mumbler / the ill-to-meet / the scutt / the dew creature / the grass biter / the late at home / the treacherous / the friendless one / the wood-cat / the broad gazer / the broom cat / the purblind / the furze cat / 

the croucher / the west gazer / the wall eyed / the side gazer / likewise the hedge chaser / the stub-deer / the long ear / the straw beast / the lecher / the wild beast / the leaper / the short beast / the lurker / the wind swift / the skulker / the hare shagger / 

a hopper of ditches / a cropper of corn / a wee brown cow / with a pair of leather horns

the hedge cowerer / the dew duck / the dew hopper / the sitter / the grass hopper / the fittle foot / the fold sitter / the light foot / the fern sitter / the cabbage deer / the weed cropper / the go by ground / the sit still / the peg tail / the turn to hill / 

the swift away / to make afraid / the white of womb / the go with lambs / the chump / the jowler / the miser / the peasant / the make unrest / the break word / the snub nose / the shaven / his chief name is villain...

when the hare dies the fox mourns: when the hare rises the falcon swoops
hold with the hare and run with the hounds 

the stag with the leathery horns
the animal that lives in the corn
the animal that all men scorn
but the animal that no one dare name the animal that no one dare name 

oh the blood more stirs: to rouse a lion than to start a hare  
hold with the hare and run with the hounds 

watch the tree and await the hare
watch the tree and await the hare 

don't loose the falcon til you see the hare 

a hare is a hare...
 
when the hare dies the fox mourns: when the hare rises the falcon swoops 

the stag with the leathery horns
the animal that lives in the corn
the animal that all men scorn
but the animal that no one dare name

and when all this you have spoken then the hare's might is broken / 
then you can journey forth east and west and south and north 
whatever way a man will a man that has any skill

and now good day to you, Sir Hare 
so well may God let you fair
that you come to me alive:
above black furrows
beneath winter skies.*


(* The final line of the piece is actually along the lines of  '...as will bring you to me dead, either in onion broth or just in bread...', but after a particularly potent encounter with a hare on one bleak January day whilst crossing the frozen furrows of a Northumbrian field, I changed the ending to something more suitable.  I have eaten hare though - as game meats go, with the right amount of preparation, marinading etc. I'd have to say the effect was one of near perfect communion with the sort of elements which were our celebratory delight in the rare owld times which lurks at the unspoken heart of this piece, but not something to make a habit out of!)

The Names of the Hare : 14-9-2009

A quite spontaneous rendering of Robert Graves' poem The Allansford Pursuit, from memory I might add, so forgive any errors.  You can find the original as a footnote on page 402 of The White Goddess (Faber, 1961), being Graves' reconstruction of a fragment given by the celebrated witch Isobel Gowdie at her trial in 1662.  This poem has been with me for 31 years from the setting made by Raymond Greenoaken (which I still sing) so it's as much a matter of communion with my personal wryd as it is anything folkloric per-se.  Gowdie's verse has proved potent in recent decades, and spawned many such reconstructions - at least one which has been passed off as 'Traditional' - The Fith-Fath Song given as such in John and Caitlín Matthews' The Western Way (1985) - but, in fact, owes at least as much to Graves as it does to Gowdie, so more Filk than Folk.  

This performance is entirely live by the way, the accompaniment coming from a randomly sequenced Korg Monotribe going in & out of phase with a violin loop from the preceding improvisation from which this was edited (message me if you want the whole thing - 30 minutes)  together with various FX, filters, delays, & echoes.

Image : one of my triple hare gew-gaws currently in the process of development; this one based on an original in the church of St Andrews in the Devon village of South Tawton.  Message me if you'd like one: gew-gaws@sedayne.co.uk  

*

Here's my rendering of the piece in Raymond's setting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw7FUAsiVyc

*

I will go into a hare
with sorrow and sighing and mickle care,
and I will go in the Devil's name,
aye 'til I be fetched hame
- Hare, take heed of a bitch greyhound
will harry thee all these fells around
for here come I in Our Lady's name
all but for to fetch thee hame

Cunning and art he did not lack
but aye her whistle would fetch him back

I will go into a trout
With sorrow and sighing and mickle doubt,
And show thee many a merry game,
Ere that I be fetched hame.
- Trout, take heed of an otter lank,
will harry close from bank to bank.
For here come I in Our Lady's name
All but for to fetch thee hame.

Cunning and art he did not lack,
But aye her whistle would fetch him back.

Yet I will go into a bee,
With mickle horror and dread of thee
And flit to hive in the Devil's name,
Ere that I be fetched hame
- Bee, take heed of a swallow hen,
Will harry close, both but an' ben,
For here come I in Our Lady's name,
All but for the fetch thee hame

Cunning and art he did not lack,
But aye her whistle would fetch him back.

Yet I shall go into a mouse,
And haste me unto the miller's house,
There in his corn to have good game,
Ere that I be fetched hame.
- Mouse, take heed of a white tib-cat,
that never was baulked of a mouse or rat,
For I'll crack thy bones in Our Lady's name,
Thus shalt thou be fetched hame.

Cunning and art he did not lack,
But aye her whistle would fetch him back.





GO INTO A HARE : 17-1-13

Real-time improvisation looping Behringer CRAVE on the Line 6 Delay modeller + Oxygen 8 keyboard c. 2003 (hey, if it's good enough for Kraftwerk...)

WEATHER OWL 4 - E : 29th July 2020

Version of Country Life from John Barleycorn Reborn; without the voice, just the birds and the synthesiser.

LAYLUM (Country Life Version, 10.9.2020)

Apology : Folk Music is outsider by default; feral, vernacular, idiosyncratic; it is the untutored natural born individual touched by both tradition and the prospective urge to create within that tradition (whatever it may be, however so derived). Ironically, this applies less to singing Traditional Songs in a revival context than it does to exploring the analogue vocabularies of electronic music that I've been brought up with since year dot by way of general cultural ambiance, from the ubiquitous sounds of Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire though the experimental sonorities of Sun Ra and the Prog Era, to the general Dance Aesthetic of the present time, itself determined by the glorious legacy of Kraftwerk et al. The Folk Musician is a product of all this, and more, as they cast their gaze into the heavens, and let the music dream awhile whilst pondering the infinite and the eternal, however so mundane the cause. As with our sexuality and spirituality, music is unique to each of us, yet common to all.  I mostly do this because the walls of our lovely little sea-side Victorian terraced house are too thin to persist in acoustic instruments, of which there's a few here, mostly field-recorded in old churches. 

History : Since being given a hand-crafted Yugoslavian wooden whistle flute * by his grandparents as an inquisitive 7-year-old in 1968, Sedayne has devoted himself to the exploration of ethnic and folk instruments, recording and performing since 1977 in areas of Mediaeval, Traditional &amp; Experimental music, somehow managing to combine all three in his own compositional work.  His first forays into pure electronica were at the age of 12 in 1973 when introduced to the EMS Synthi & TEAC 4-track tape recorder at a local Arts Centre.  This aspect of things has re-emerged of late, as has his interest in electric guitars & diverse glissando techniques, filters, delays and loops which he abandoned as a teenager in search of acoustic purity.  40 years on, it seems, such things don't matter anymore.

Related : With his wife Rachel, Sean is one half of folk 'n' fun duo Rapunzel & Sedayne.  He also masquerades as Hermione Harvestman - a seance of hauntological curation in words, images and music.   

Cover Pic : June 2015, St. Barnabas, Queen Camel, Somerset.  In the footsteps of Kathleen Basford...

sedayneLORE

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