Category Archives: Artist Announcements

United Bible Studies – Procession/Chop Chop

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Although listed as “Procession/Chop Chop” on the score what we have here is firstly the music from the old song “Fause Foodrage”

Since 1968, that tune has been used for the folk song “Willie O Winsbury” , I think it was Sweeneys Men who started it. This has led to some classic recordings from the likes of Pentangle, Anne Briggs, The Owl Service and Meg Baird.

Also included in this piece is the old nursery rhyme “oranges and lemons”.

United Bible Studies are a collective who put out their debut album in 2003 and their line-up is ever changing and evolving.

This time around, UBS was David Colohan (Agitated Radio Pilot, Raising Holy Sparks) who performed at the recent Barbican concert of Wicker Man music, Dom Cooper (The Straw Bear Band, The Owl Service) & Grey Malkin (The Hare & The Moon, Folk Horror Revival, Widow’s Weeds, Embertides) whose poem “Doonie Woods” is read by Linda Hyden at the start of “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched”

They’ve treated the two assembled tracks very differently. The Procession/Willie part is a ghostly, slowed down version that brings the maximum folk horror vibe. For the “Chop Chop” part they’ve taken a more radical, global approach with a lot of Indian classical influences there and even some riff.

https://wasistdas.bandcamp.com/album/ballads-of-seduction-fertility-and-ritual-slaughter

Sophie Cooper – Fire Leap

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The Fire Leap is widely credited to Paul Giovanni for both music and lyrics, but surely the lyrics must as least be by Anthony Shaffer and possibly inspired by something he found during his research. It’s a shame neither are around today, there’s so much more to be asked.

Sophie Cooper first emerged on the scene as a beguiling lo-fi singer-songwriter but today is renowned for her wild trombone skills ever since her first collaboration with French musician Delphine Dora on….Was Ist Das?

Since then she has played trombone with Wolf Eyes in Paris and toured the UK and Ireland. She’s gone on to have a piece commissioned by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival that went on to be Ivor Novello nominated, became co-chair of the Oram Trust and created music inspired by Dante for the John Rylands Library.

I couldn’t imagine doing a project like this without getting Sophie involved but which song? I imagined her creating fresh, exciting angles on most of the songs here. It was actually an accident that lead to her doing this song and when I heard the results, it was hard not to think perhaps it was just meant to be.

This version has been arranged for voice and trombone, and while its a faithful arrangement, the change from the high sounds of the flute to the deep, earthy sound of the trombone creates a sinister undertone behind Sophie’s sweet voice. It has the unearthly familiarity of a close friend who suddenly cuts their hair short.

https://wasistdas.bandcamp.com/album/ballads-of-seduction-fertility-and-ritual-slaughter

Meg Baird – Willow’s Song

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We can easily all agree that this is the best known and most widely covered song on Wicker Man soundtrack, right? That meant the mission here was big, super big. As soon as I considered this song, I knew I wanted Meg Baird and it was actually kind of a deal breaker. If Meg had said no, I’m not sure I’d have charged ahead with this.

Meg first came to prominence as part of Espers. Espers formed in 2002 and were a major part of the psychedelic folk scene of that era.

She cut an incredible album of covers with her Espers bandmate Helena Espvall and Englush songwriter Sharron Kraus in 2006

Following that, she began making solo albums for Drag City, the latest of which is “Furling” which came out this year

I knew 100% that this was going to be incredible and Meg did not disappoint. Recorded and mixed by Ben Chasny, every time I hear this, I get goosebumps.

https://wasistdas.bandcamp.com/album/ballads-of-seduction-fertility-and-ritual-slaughter

The Owl Service & Harriet Bradshaw – The Tinker of Rye

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Now this song was one of the ones that I had to think hard about. The lyrics for this one seem to be original, while the concept – a tale of a tinker full of innuendo, isn’t (see the Jolly Tinker for instance, though there are some versions of that that ditch the innuendo for actual filth)

The trouble with this one is it seems to have been made specifically for Lee’s baritone and also light opera is not as malleable as folk music. I needed an artist with both an empathy for the material and a proven track record of doing interesting cover versions.

It seemed like The Owl Service were needed. After all, it wouldn’t even be their first tangle with the Wicker Man.

But what really swung it for me was hearing this recent and brilliantly inventive version of the old folk song “She Moved Through The Fair”.

The word came back, I had the Owl Service but it would be a collaboration with new singer-songwriter Harriet Bradshaw. I went and checked her Bandcamp and the feeling was very, very right.

So, while I knew this was a track that probably nobody would want to try and tackle, at the same time I knew it was in a safe pair of hands. The results are, of course, radically different and yet also actually very intuitive and a natural evolution of the song. I’d worried that this was the mission impossible but the crack team from Leigh On Sea took care of it.

https://wasistdas.bandcamp.com/album/ballads-of-seduction-fertility-and-ritual-slaughter

Magpahi – May Pole

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The May Pole song is an old folk song known as “The Rambling Bog” or “The Rattlin’ Bog” (very old songs passed on orally often ended up in different versions like a musical version of Chinese whispers/telephone).

Mahpahi is the nom de plume of Alison Cooper, formerly of Twisted Nerve act Sam and the Plants.

She was into this sort of thing long before the rest of us. Here’s her first EP from 2008:

Yet Alison’s connection runs deeper than music as a curator, visual artist and educator, with a deep knowledge of folklore and customs through her work in museums and with the scene-setting Folklore Tapes label. Here’s her 2012 work on Devon folklore

However, those of you who have followed her on social media will notice she’s also been very interested in building synthesizers in recent years. This might explain why her take on the May Pole song has this astonishingly warm synth sound, like the elegiac touch of an old church organ, a very distinctive (to my ears) sound. A distinctly hauntological touch that works fantastically.

https://wasistdas.bandcamp.com/album/ballads-of-seduction-fertility-and-ritual-slaughter

Good Shepherd with Maydo Kay – Gently Johnny

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A shortened version of the old folk song “Gently Jonny, My Jingalo” aka “The Fair Made of WIckham”, I never even heard this song until I finally got the extended version of the film in 2006.

Coming to me nearly 15 years later than the rest of the soundtrack makes this song feel really special and it seems perverse that it was cut in the first place.

This was quite an easy one to figure out as I’d been listening to the debut album from Good Shepherd a lot in 2021. It’s called “Let’s See What The East Wind Brings” and is out on Irish label Rusted Rail.

I think you can see from the song above how I made the connection. I wanted someone who could make it even mellower without losing any of its beauty. Mission accomplished!

Andrew Liles – The Landlord’s Daughter

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As I looked at the list of songs, this one definitely caused a lot more consideration that most.

Based on a old song collected by Cecil Sharp (according to a contemporary interview with Paul Giovanni the older version was weirder, possibly referring to “The Hostesses Daughter” which while pretty rude isn’t as bawdy as what Shaffer turned it into), its a bunch of old men singing lewdly about a young woman.

In the film its presented in such a jolly manner and in the old version of the film, you’re left wondering if its all just some crude jokes or are they actually intimately familiar with her? However, the DVD age brought us the longer cut found in Roger Corman’s office and we see Lord Summerisle bringing the young man to Willow.

This context makes us look at this song in a different light. It also made me wonder – “What sort of maniac would actually want to cover this?”

Andrew Liles started out as solo artist at the start of the century putting out CDRs but rose to prominence through his work with Nurse With Wound and Current 93. While still a core part of those acts, he’s continued as a solo artist and also worked with the likes of Faust, The Groundhogs [you HAVE to hear his remix of “Split”], Peter Strickland and Maniac (of Mayhem!).

Liles’ version is very fearless, never flinching from the possible disturbing implications of what lies behind the song. In fact, he amplifies them, creating a genuinely horrifying waltz of madness.

Alvarius B – Corn Rigs

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I always found the films arrangement of this very curious. You’ve got the lyrics by Burns celebrating his latest conquest, set to a very folky guitar arrangement but then the vocal delivery is incredibly saccharine (though beautifully sung, to be fair) for the topic.

I felt my mission required me to find an expert guitar plucker who could deliver a more restrained vocal. I gave this one a lot of thought and racked the brain cells thoroughly for days. As usual, it came by accident, I was looking for a CD to put on and saw my copy of “Baroque Primitiva” on the shelf and it hit me like a punch on the nose.

I knew he was a fan of the film as he’d done a wonderful version of “Gently Johnny” and that iconoclastic touch he’s had all his career meant there was no way it would end up saccharine. Like most folks, I was first exposed to Al’s talents with his classic group Sun City Girls. If you never heard them, you never lived.

Anyway, this new version by Alvarius B does exactly what the song needed. Recorded in a Cairo studio, its got a much more small room intimacy to it that the original lacked and a much more appropriate vocal to Burns’ words. This is how I always wanted it to sound

Burd Ellen – The Highland Widow’s Lament

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Less than two months before the idea for this album hit me, I discovered the music of Burd Ellen (named after the old ballad).

I was sent a download of this to review:

My first reaction was “Well I review albums not 7″ singles”. Then I heard it and before I knew it, my pen was in my hand filling out a whole page of my notebook devoted to those two songs.

I started this project by putting all the names of the songs in a spreadsheet. This song was first on the list because it appears first in the film (though both versions of the soundtrack start with ‘Barley Rigs’, something I refuse to do).

So this was the first song I looked at and I didn’t need to give it any thought at all. This was blatantly obvious, it HAD to be Burd Ellen. It was a microsecond decision.

What came back managed to surprise as well as delight me.

It starts off in similar territory to the film version except with just the one singer but it quickly deconstructs as you realize it’s Burns original words, and as that penny drops, the music escalates into a series of drifting drones from strings and keys.

The vocals become more distant, more echoing and over its near eight minute stretch the unearthliness becomes overwhelming.

It makes me imagine Sgt.Howie waking up at the inn. He’s shocked to see he’s overslept and it’s early evening. He runs downstairs to find the bar empty. Instinct kicks in and he runs down to the deserted harbor, steals the dingy and frantically rows out to his plane.

He flies back over the same landmarks but once he gets out to sea a great fog lifts and no matter how high he goes, the visibility is terrible. He gently brings the boat down to land on the sea and wait it out.

He opens the door and wrinkles his nose. It’s not fog, it’s smoke. He notices a ferryman standing nearby in the smoke on a small skiff, holding a punt . He almost asks him what is burning but then he remembers that it is him.