recent Beltaine gathering

Three weeks ago I was out in West Wales for a Beltaine gathering with various old and new friends. Wild music was played around the fire each night, as one might expect.

Some situations, like this, I find inappropriate for recording. There are practical reasons (the fire being the centre of activity is the ideal place to position the microphone, spatially, but...Also, the darkness can result in people tripping over wires, things being dropped - and then there's the background noise, people talking, etc.). But there are also other, more subtle, reasons. Even if people don't realise they're being recorded, the presence of recording technology seems to have a detrimental effect on the 'musical atmosphere'. Some music is best left unrecorded, I think, a gift to the Universe, not meant to be captured. Sometimes, despite one's best efforts, it seems to resist being captured (something goes wrong with the equipment, batteries die, discs get wiped, etc).

In this case I'd decided to leave the fireside jamming unrecorded, but on a couple of occasions couldn't resist... I captured less than 20 minutes of sound, but it's really quite nice, so I've uploaded it to the Internet Archive Open Source audio collection (link below):

Listen Here