second St. Stephens vocal/Drone collaboration

Keith - electric guitar, acoustic bass guitar, mandola, piano, percussion
Henry - percussion
Rupert - percussion, slide-whistle
me - saz, balalaika, acoustic bass guitar, percussion, piano (just a few notes)
James T - piano, percussion, poetry, water
Vaughan - acoustic guitar, mandolin, voice, slide-whistle
Jo, Jenny and Pete - voices (Pete had to leave at half-time)
two anonymous characters who wandered in off the High Street - sinister mumblings


a curious feature on the south wall of St. Stephens church
Another excellent Drone session at St. Stephens church. This was the second time we've collaborated with some of Vaughan's vocal improvisation group, and it worked even better than the first time. The singers were presumably more at home and familiar with how the whole Drone thing works. James played some lovely piano, and Rupert and Henry's percussion output is becoming increasingly well meshed.

During the last, very long, jam, a couple of drunks wandered in off the High Street, and sat in the corner mumbling in increasingly loud voices. This was quite disconcerting at the time, but shortly after that, Keith's friend Gordon, a.k.a. DJ Bush Telegraph, (a no-nonsense Northerner) wandered in to listen for a while, which for some reason made me feel less disconcerted. The drunks eventually left of their own accord, but their rather sinister sounding mumblings, indecipherable in the church acoustic, add to the recordings quite interestingly (rather like the voices on parts of Dark Side of the Moon, except you can't hear what they're actually saying, which is probably a good thing).

Listen Here
Another sonic serendipity, which I hadn't noticed on previous St. Stephens recordings, was the sound of the last few Wednesday night buses passing by - a kind of 'wooshing' sound which in some instances sounds like an intentional part of the music.