Soundcloud recording of the week (no. 3)

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Recorded in All Saints Church in Alton Priors, a Wiltshire village not far from the stone circles of Avebury, just after the summer solstice of 2007. This tune was conceived exactly a year earlier on nearby Knap Hill. I'm playing saz and Stef (of the Mordekkers) is percussing with shaky egg and footstomps. More field recordings from that solstice can be found here. The 19th century Northamptonshire pastoral-mystic poet John Clare recorded that it was "a very old custom among villagers in summer time to stick a piece of greensward full of field flowers and place it as an ornament in their cottages which ornaments are called Midsummer Cushions."