Five more musical things? Well there has been the distraction of the four loom weaver, keeping one loom going is more than enough of a challenge, four at the same time? That’s serious, The weaver was distractimg and so was the pulling together the Why? show although who really knows why? Here a photograph of Palberta, they’re getting ready to release new things, and here then in no particular order are five pieces of music that passed this was in the last few days while we’ve been busy sorting out the art and the artists for next Tuesday’s opening of Cultivate’s Why show here on these pages…

Five slices of fresh music and some four loom pondering…

1: Palberta – No messing today, straight in, “Corner Store” by New York’s Palberta, from their upcoming album Palberta5000 Out in January 2021 on Wharf Cat Records. A video directed and edited by Palberta’s Nina

2: Creston Spiers – Creston Spiers, guitarist/vocalist of Harvey Milk is about to release his second solo album. Must admitHarvey Milk are a band we haven’t thought about for quite some time, they were (are?) excellent back there. The new album is out in early December, there’ one track up on the Bandcamp page right now, a rather blues flavoured thing, still with that alternative experimental edge of Harvey Milk The album is out on We Empty Rooms, there looks to be sone imterestin earfood to be found on the We Empty Rooms Bandcamp page, don’t think they’ve passed our way before, like the heavier sound of The Whip or indeed Raving Drooling, a band who appear to have something to do with Creston as well. Wicked City sound rather interesting as well, Australia’s most over looked three piece so thay say.

“What makes Creston’s music, both solo and with Harvey Milk, stand out is this: in a world (heavy/loud music) that’s thoroughly polluted with toxic macho energy, Spiers’ output has straddled the divide between crushing riffs, great heaviness and brutally honest emotion and vulnerability more than anyone we can really think of. That all combined gives his stuff a gravitas that lots of would-be heavy stuff lacks. It’s music that isn’t really made for an audience, at least in the traditional sense. At minimum, it isn’t written to  sell stuff, build fan base or anything remotely like that. It’s brutally personal, sometimes painful stuff (and also funny and hopeful)”

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3: Abi Sofia & Alan Holmes – “Here’s some free music recorded in the Summer by Abi Sophie Beath and myself and used as a soundtrack for the North Wales Botanical Theatre’s woodland performance “Something You Might Lichen” as part of the Surrealist Saffaru event in Menai Bridge in August”.

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4: Gabríel Ólafs – ‘Absent Minded Reworks’ is out this week via One Little Independent Records. Miniature melodies, classical warmth, dainty indeed, quiet, uplifting, minimal, cleansing, a weight lifted – After a widely positive reception for ‘Piano Works’– the solo deconstruction by Gabríel Ólafs of his debut album ‘Absent Minded’–the gifted Icelandic composer is returning in November with his collection of reworks. A dramatically different take on his previous release, this time he’s enlisted the talent of Niklas Paschburg, Hugar, Masayoshi Fujita, Kelly Moran and more to completely reinterpret his usually minimalist output”. He’s from Iceland, of course he is – Bandcamp / Smartlink

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5: Cabaret Voltaire – A rather surprising piece, What’s Goin’ On’ is taken from the forthcoming Cabaret Voltaire album, Shadow of Fear, released on Mute on 20 November 2020. More details via the Bandcamp page

Here’s some more, slightly less surprising than What’s Goin’ On maybe?

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And it has mostly been about different versions of that four loom weaver this last week…

“Two short songs that document the wretched poverty that abounded during the British Industrial Revolution in the late 18th Century. Ewan MacColl sings the first, written in 1790, in a recording made in 1951 by Alan Lomax for the World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Here are the lyrics for the first song, from Lancashire, which is in dialect, and the first three lines of the second song, from Yorkshire, which is much easier to understand:”

I’m a four loom weaver, as many a one knows.
I’ve naught t’eat, and I’ve wore out mi clothes.
Mi clogs are both broken, and stockin’s I’ve none.
They’d hardly give me tuppence for all I’m gettin’ on
Ole Billy at Bent, he kept telling me long (i.e, for a long time)
We might have better times if I’d not but hold mi tongue.
Well, I’ve held mi tongue till I’ve near lost mi breath
And I feel in mi heart that I’ll soon clem (starve) to death.

[Refrain]

Ole Billy’s all right, he never will clem
And he’s never picked o’er in his life. [Unclear meaning: “ne’er picked o’er” could mean “never was reduced to scrounging,” probably for pieces of coal on a slag heap and “ne’er picked ore could refer to working as a lead washer in a mine. Lead mining in the north began the same year this song was written.]
The Second Song refers to lead mining:
The ore is waitin’ in the tubs/The snow’s upon the fell. (a barren or stony hill) Canny folk (the smart people) are sleepin’ yet, but lead is reet (right) to sell, etc. The rest is clear.

(with thanks ot whoever typed that out)

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More of this tomorrow or the next day….