The British Isles have a rich history of folk traditions. A unique blend of complex history, intertwined with the cycles and symbolism of the natural world.
A huge spiderweb of traditions, festivals and moments that whilst ancient and mysterious, still have a very real power today. I grew up in Queensferry, and between 1999 and 2012, I was the town’s Burryman, a tradition so ancient and unwritten, its meaning is genuinely lost in the mists of time. A pagan god – a fertility symbol – a scapegoat – but rather than just a mere nostalgic retracing, my experience felt like a direct connection back to times when we truly listened, observed, and embraced the land. The nature I still deeply love was amplified by every one of the hundreds of hooks on each of the 11,000 burdock seed heads I was encased in, like a radio antenna, connected to a green and endlessly fertile nirvana. A disorientating magic you could feel, touch and transmit.
Clearly this sort of earthy angle beams through several individuals and groups in the late sixties, and early seventies. Annie Briggs, Shirely Collins, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Dr Strangely Strange, The Incredible String Band, The Third Ear Band and many more, all revisiting and drawing on forms borrowed and filtered from the vernacular culture of our fields, forests and coastlines…
More than 50 years into the future from that well celebrated revival, MAY by Ariane Churchman & Benedict Drew feels like a huge contemporary reimagining of this entire scene. A modern soundtracking of washing your face in the morning dew, the forms of oak trees and hares, and odd processions, backlit by a world that increasingly doesn’t care.
But this time the music isn’t acoustic and pristine – it’s fogged up in a mandala of droning electronics, snatches of the modern world, seemingly at odds with the delicate ancient heart at the centre of the music.
MAY is a compilation, gathered from a handful of closely themed releases by Churchman and Drew, released last May as a lavish, limited-edition double LP (now sold out) and also digitally. Containing 9 tracks, and running as a long drifting 73-minute sequence, MAY immediately delights in a form of modern folk that’s unavoidable not to get lost in.
The 14 minutes opener The Cuckoo feels like the start of the entire procession, a drumbeat with Churchman’s gentle vocals, pecked at firstly by bird songs, then consumed in woozy electronics as everything melts and oozes. Within a few short minutes your initiation into this new world is complete, as you swim in a textured swell of hallucinations that build and blossom.
The brief The Branched Body to a Maypole acts like a mist shrouded bridge towards the sprawling 12 minutes of The May Dew, another out of focus drift through dawn sunbeams. In fact, as the album settles, It’s clear the lyrics, all taken from tradition songs, perform like starting points for the sound to trace, enlarge then consume and obliterate. Masses of sonic material redrawing Churchman’s voice in layers, and swirls of Drew’s electronic clouds, absorbed from the accumulation of centuries.
This approach defines the entire album, and in a way, whilst it’s a compilation, the remaining 6 tracks all feel like linked fragments in a unified whole. The Pleasant Month of May has a dizzily quality, Down By the Green Groves (Sing Sing So Green) gets drowned in seesawing tones, Day Song is a long droning gaze towards the horizon, The Green Bushes grant access a new world in the undergrowth. The penultimate track Searching for May reaches actual space, a moonlit lysergic memory, dusted in wonky bells. Finally with a brief closer The Ghost of Mary Potter, fingers of silence emerge around the sounds…
MAY finally trails of into nothing and gathers in the memory like a day documented in hundreds of photos you don’t remember taking. Churchman’s vocals do recall Broadcast’s Trish Keenan, sadly another link into the past, but this album feels like a fresh new way of assembling familiar threads. Drew’s electronics and textures may have felt somehow initially incongruous but end up giving the entire project an intoxicating and throbbing dreamy quality.
Discovering and tuning in to MAY late (it was released in May 2024), as this summer slowly turns to autumn, might sit at odds with the heart of the material. But in essence this album somehow sits perfectly enmeshed amongst the trees and skies, whichever month or season you happen to tune in…
MAY is available digitally here
obladada.com 