songs from the wood

A couple more magical woodland gigs in the secret location near Canterbury:

8th June 2017
Yama Warashi, Dubi Dolczek and Cloudshoes

Yama Warashi semi-acoustic! Yoshino played a "passive" keyboard (was it a Clavinet?) plugged into a little busking amp, and Lewis similarly amped his bass (we had a momentary panic just before their set, a loose wire under his volume control, swiftly rectified by candlelight with the help of our friend Mr. Leatherman). Temporarily stripping away a lot of the sonic processing allowed a rare glimpse of Yama Warashi in a kind of essential form, making it even more evident than usual how special this band is. Conrad started the evening with another unclassifiable solo set as Cloudshoes, followed by an extraordinary card trick from Lewis, then a rather understated set from Dubi Dolczek and friends Graham wasn't having the best of nights, but still managed to make it immensely entertaining for everyone. Some of the new Dubi in Space album got played, along with some Inkspots and rocksteady tunes. This subset of Bristol's BLOOM collective was on its way over to play three in Belgium and France, this made for a nice fireside send-off from the Canterbury crowd.

18th June 2017
Lay Clerks of Canterbury Cathedral and The Selkies

I kept the Lay Clerks secret so as to avoid scaring off anyone who might suspect religion was being pushed (it wasn't, they're entirely secular when off-duty!). This set was put together by our friend Sam (from Maine) who recently moved down from York. He sang in the Minster choir up there and is now with the Cathedral choir. He'd mentioned how he could bring some friends from the choir to sing, and I'd suggested a programme of William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons choral pieces as a late birthday present to myself. He brought a couple of other "lay clerks" (they're not "choristers" — those are the young boys) and his wife Jess. They managed to sing a William Byrd Latin mass for five voices, with Sam covering one of the five with his accordion, then sang some Gibbons madrigals, including the beautiful "The Silver Swan", and the almost Zappa-like "Cries of London" (a kind of early 17th century sound collage, described elsewhere online as "one of the most peculiar and strangely effective consort songs of the period").

The Selkies (Flo and Nou) broke off from revising together for their chemistry GCSE (the next day!) and came over from the Sandwich area to enchant everyone with their imaginative songs and stunning harmonies. A new one called "Treefrog", involving an mbira, brought The Raincoats to mind... it'll be interesting to see what they'll evolve into, 'cos they're already amazing. A few days later they were to launch their debut EP Woodlouse at St. Mary's in Sandwich: