back from dahn sahf (and a proposal for a lazy sunday afternoon)

   
howard has been busy.

friends are back from portugal. horsemouth is back from dahn sarf. he went to folk synthesis, an event organised by nigel (formerly known as nigel of bermondsey), in the ruins of peckham. ok - no it was in a venue/ bar/ record shop in the basement of a warehouse minutes from the train station. there he met up with john clarkson and the fashionable youth sold him beer.

he saw;

the gentlefolk and a modular synthesizer making hawkwindish noises - nigel on dub bass, the others singing their way through a variety of folksongs of the shirley collins variety (which was pleasant), horsemouth had missed modular synthesizer, throat singing earlier (which he regrets).

the delta girls claimed house of the rising sun was recorded by the animals in 1963 (wikipedia says 1964 but anyway) horsemouth and john thought it was later. horsemouth identified the instrument being played as a dulcimer (it was not, it began with a c and was boat shaped if that helps anyone identify it). horsemouth liked the tunes (trance blues type things), the harmonica playing, violin and the percussion, he thinks (if he is honest) the lead vocal is a little thin and could ideally do with more backup. (he’d say this about himself if he was honest).

two of stick in the wheel nigel and the dude on modular synth made a kind of soundsystem murmuring and echoed vocals thing - ‘more reverb, more delay’ pleaded the singer.

katy with her nigel produced album struggled with monitoring, the sound out front was excellent. at last someone who is more of a polo-phile than horsemouth. the piano versus organ and moog (remember this is said to rhyme with rogue people) sounded excellent, if camel did concept albums about poland it would sound like this.

the friends who are back from portugal spent their last day in a fernando pessoa inspired wander round lisbon - horsemouth has fernando pessoa: the genesis of the heteronyms round here somewhere in which the non-eponymous poet multiplies himself into a whole movement of critics and commentators, poets and schools. jose saramago in his year of the death of ricardo reis continues the routine still further by having the poets return to lisbon in the order of their death

‘I found pessoa by accident, and have been for the last 15 years or so, for better or worse, fascinated by him, and his poetry. as you will realise, he was complex, so very complex that one could almost believe he wanted to throw up a smokescreen, and of course this he has done in many ways...’ 

so wrote jcr green in the special edition of his literary magazine prospice published out of portree on the isle of skye. (camden libraries- withdrawn - 20p)