strange visions (basket of light)

horsemouth was recently asked what his influences were.

in musicians of bremen it's much less about his influences than howard's (many of which are more recent than horsemouth's), there are influences in common, you can see this in one of the cover versions that horsemouth has brought to the band - allen ginsberg's father death blues - but on the whole horsemouth supposes the trick is not to find a song where the current version is amazing (why they have chosen blue crystal fire and silver raven) but to find one where it isn't fullfilling its full potential - live and learn.

there is one record that has had a key influence on horsemouth's 'folk' direction...

in the valleys of south wales in the 1970ies nestling between the moody blues in search of the lost chord  and the beatles blue album in horsemouth's parents record collection was basket of light  by pentangle. it had a gatefold sleeve in a distinctive brown (like led zepellin II known to fans as the brown bomber), a  photo of them onstage at the royal albert hall has been recomposed so that they are doubled and floating  above the circled tiers of opera boxes with their orange curtains. inside is the tracklisting, a brief description of each of the songs ('learnt by bert from neighbour's children in somerset', 'written on a 74 bus from gloucester road to greencroft gardens on an early spring day'), and black and white photos overexposed and close cropped that make them appear more bohemian and arty than they actually were (they were infact a notorious pack of drinkers). 

it was the particular lightness and space of the acoustic instrumentation that made it stand out - the double bass of danny thompson and the drumming of tony cox, the shifting time signatures and accents that keep the songs on their toes - that and the astonishing clarity and purity of jacqui mcshee's singing. this is probably the element of the band that horsemouth likes the least - but it's sparingly deployed, broken up by two group sing-alongs and three duets  (in particular bert jansch's singing voice is pleasingly un-dulcet and sits really well against mcshee's). one can imagine what pentangle would have sounded like if they'd had a harsh voiced singer. 

much of the record is made up of band compositions - bluesy, aimiable tunes given a bit of oomph by danny thompson's bass and their cover of the jaynetts 'sally go round the roses'   (for example, or springtime promises a notting hill feelin' groovy). what  is interesting is how few of the tunes are actually 'folk' tunes - slightly less than half - 'lyke walk dirge', 'once I had a sweetheart', 'the house carpenter'. 'the cuckoo'. all these are well known tunes from the folk revival scene played by other artists and in pretty much their standard forms. four songs deal with supernatural events 'lyke walk dirge', 'the hunting song', 'the house carpenter', arguably light flight itself ('strange visions (pass me by)'). it is in the middle 8 of these songs that the magic occurs - where a change in instrumental or vocal texture takes the narrative wordlessly on.

one reason is that it's hard to achieve transcendence through bluster (through mere volume) as it is often achieved in rock music with acoustic instruments - it's on a more human scale, it takes more thought.

horsemouth never quite found this elsewhere, pentangle never quite found this form again (though they had losts of good moments but also more than their fair share of underwhelming noodling). horsemouth never really found this in the incredible string band ,or fairport or the rest of the english folk scene, perhaps in the odd record he hears it, in katie cruel, in silver raven.  

but if it doesn't yet exist it remains to be made.