TEMPLE MUSIC — Beta - Gedney - St. Mary Magdalene
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"This, the second in the seven album GREEN MAN series finds Alan Trench (ORCHIS, CUNNAN, S.Q.E., TWELVE THOUSAND DAYS) & Stephen Robinson (THE BELOVED) inspired by the brooding landscape and history of England’s Fenlands to create a spectacular and dramatic piece of music that mixes djembe and percussion rhythms from Christopher Patinios with an amazing array of acoustic instruments and electronic treatments – appalachian dulcimer, Irish low whistle, autoharp, bow psaltery to name but a few meet synthesiser and fx drones & field recordings. With the addition of Harry Houlton (who has recently been joining the band for live performances) on treated slide guitar, TEMPLE MUSIC continue on their seven step journey with an album that stands up well with the magnificent first volume despite being entirely different…
This extremely limited Art Edition release comes in a beautiful handmade package, with individually painted and hand-blocked outer sleeve and complementary inner sleeve – and PLEASE NOTE that this is a NEW and RE-MASTERED EDITION that has a depth and tonality missing from the Woven Wheat download version – now unavailable due to the unfortunate demise of that label – and is exclusive to this SHINING DAY release.
This is what TEMPLE MUSIC have written about the album:
This recording is part of a series of seven long pieces inspired and informed by different Green Man locations in the county of Lincolnshire, England; for this volume we travelled into the Fens, once vast, shifting and treacherous ; now a place of huge skies and endless acres of rolling arable land, in the heart of which are found several small villages with Gedney in their names; -ey being a suffix meaning isle, or islet. This was a wild place, where the local 'fen tigers' ruled, and where the titular landowners travelled only with permission, and accompanied. And in this historic landscape stands St Mary Magdalene; a large scattered Parish of fen and sea reclamation land with ancient dykes running through it and here and there the ancient remains of the salt pans used in the old salt making industry.
Seen today, the Fens are still strange and lonely places, although far removed from the time when Gedney was an island in an everchanging network of reed bound channels and stagnant pools where danced the dead men's lights, a kingdom unto itself that knew the rule of no man outside it and where secrets and customs were (and are) passed from mouth to mouth, generation to generation, blood to blood. It is this ancient landscape that we have tried to map with this, the second in the series of the Temple Music recordings in the Green Man Project series.
SR & AT, 11.07.08ev, Lincolnshire" [label info]
www.shiningday.pl
This extremely limited Art Edition release comes in a beautiful handmade package, with individually painted and hand-blocked outer sleeve and complementary inner sleeve – and PLEASE NOTE that this is a NEW and RE-MASTERED EDITION that has a depth and tonality missing from the Woven Wheat download version – now unavailable due to the unfortunate demise of that label – and is exclusive to this SHINING DAY release.
This is what TEMPLE MUSIC have written about the album:
This recording is part of a series of seven long pieces inspired and informed by different Green Man locations in the county of Lincolnshire, England; for this volume we travelled into the Fens, once vast, shifting and treacherous ; now a place of huge skies and endless acres of rolling arable land, in the heart of which are found several small villages with Gedney in their names; -ey being a suffix meaning isle, or islet. This was a wild place, where the local 'fen tigers' ruled, and where the titular landowners travelled only with permission, and accompanied. And in this historic landscape stands St Mary Magdalene; a large scattered Parish of fen and sea reclamation land with ancient dykes running through it and here and there the ancient remains of the salt pans used in the old salt making industry.
Seen today, the Fens are still strange and lonely places, although far removed from the time when Gedney was an island in an everchanging network of reed bound channels and stagnant pools where danced the dead men's lights, a kingdom unto itself that knew the rule of no man outside it and where secrets and customs were (and are) passed from mouth to mouth, generation to generation, blood to blood. It is this ancient landscape that we have tried to map with this, the second in the series of the Temple Music recordings in the Green Man Project series.
SR & AT, 11.07.08ev, Lincolnshire" [label info]
www.shiningday.pl