Artist of the Week - Winterberry - Track Title Announcement

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp - All the adventures you can eat...

I have listened to this mix many times - it is a superb way to get to know the enthralling and engrossing work of this incredible artist.

Stick it on. Give it a whirl. Lose yourself...

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp - Adventures with Concretism - Part 4

Forewarned is Forearmed...

Artist of the Week - Winterberry - The Lay of the Land

There are apparently only a few known copies of this album in existence.

Three copies are now in the possession of Andrew Hodges who bought two copies from a charity shop in York in 1997 for 50p each. Knowing that these were extremely valuable Andrew insisted on paying £10 for both (a great deal of money back then). The other copy he found in the attic of an old pub/folk singer whose wife had organised an open house clearance following his untimely death (he fell from a stile whilst exploring the Whiteway Head's Road). It is said that a fourth is held in a vault in a Hamburg bank but this cannot be verified at this time.

One of the main questions that rises from the mystery of Winterberry is why there are so few copies out there. Maytree Recordings (an unacknowledged offshoot of Island Records) folded in 1975 following a series of unsuccessful ventures with a variety of bands. Few now remember the work of Michael Tally, The Hunters of Rye, Star Spangled Bagman, A Tanner for a Pear and of course Winterberry. This is very sad because it is clear from the track that Chris Sharp has uncovered that they were a very exciting force in the world of folk music.

According to Maytree's ledgers (that Chris Sharp bought at auction last year) 500 copies were pressed in 1974 but only a few made it to the shops. Apparently the truck carrying the bulk of Maytree's stock was involved in a fatal collision on the A47 in May of that year. The stock that did survive did make it to a few branches of Woolworths, but sadly,  the Anti-Pagan League (a branch of the Nationwide Festival of Light) bought up the remaining stock and burnt them outside St Mary The Virgin Church in Uttoxeter.

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp - Adventures with Concretism - Part 3

For god's sake don't forget the empties...

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp - "I didn't choose The Black Meadow. It chose me."

(Words and images by Chris Sharp)

I had known Kevin Oyston, through connecting on SoundCloud, for while, when he got in touch and told me about the Black Meadow project. We agreed that I'd be suited to master the double-CD album, as we share a similar aesthetic, and so my exposure to this mysterious world began.

What's unique about Lambert and Oyston's Black Meadow universe is that it inhabits an odd hinterland somewhere between real and unreal. The folk tales feel vaguely familiar, as if learnt in another life, and their cautionary messages warn against immorality. Did the events in the stories actually happen? Most folk tales are rooted in truth, so despite some probable embellishment over the generations, they no-doubt tell of actual happenings.

The remarkable part is that these events all occurred within a few miles of each other, so there is a direct link between the land and the tales. But why? I'll leave the scientific speculation to the academics, while steering clear of other theories such as alien contact and alternate universe portals.

Among the artefacts we have now, in addition to the stories so painstakingly collected by Chris Lambert, is the Radio Four documentary. As an audio person, I'm full of admiration for Kev Oyston and his work in not only tracking down the master tapes for this programme, but also finding the isolated music cues. They make eerie listening, but I'm glad these pieces have finally been collected for CD release, as the composer's writing is mellifluous and technically accomplished. This wonderful music can now entertain a new generation (including me), who would never have heard the original programme.

I'm grateful to be part of the Black Meadow project, and the friendships I have made with Chris Lambert and Kev Oyston in the process. Fascinating, and at times unsettling, it has been quite a journey. But one nagging thing remains. I can't shake the curious thought from the back of mind that I didn't choose The Black Meadow. It chose me.

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp - Adventures with Concretism - Part 2

Another way of looking at it...

Sublime...

Artist of the Week - Winterberry - Origin of the name...

According to Winterberry researcher Professor Andrew Hodges (University of York); in a short unprinted interview with Broadside Magazine in 1972 the wooden masked lead singer of the new folk ensemble "Winterberry" did give some insight into the origin of their name. Hodges suggests that this was probably Colin Winterberry as Derek was known to be profoundly reclusive. Their surname was clearly a pseudonym and the real names of the band are unknown. "Colin" did admit that the name had a particular origin.

He told the magazine that whilst on a family holiday to Crow Head in Newfoundland, in the mid 50's, he had developed a taste for this inedible berry. He watched a Willow Ptarmigan voraciously eating the delicious looking berry and so decided to try some for himself. The subsequent illness he contracted resulted in him penning the song "The gorge rises in the cold breeze" which he recorded on the 1973 album "Culinary Delights and Ancient Cures". This album, like so much of the Winterberry back catalogue, is now lost. It is thanks to researchers and enthusiasts such as Chris Sharp and Andrew Hodges that we now have some insight into this fascinating band and their output.

Ilex verticillata, the winterberry, is a species of holly native to eastern North America in the United States and southeast Canada, from Newfoundland west to Ontario and Minnesota, and south to Alabama.

 Other names that have been used include Black Alder Winterberry, Brook Alder, Canada holly, Coralberry, Deciduous Holly, Deciduous Winterberry, False alder, Fever bush, Inkberry, Michigan Holly, Possumhaw, Swamp Holly, Virginian Winterberry, or Winterberry Holly. 

The species occurs particularly in wetland habitats, but also on dry sand dunes and grassland. The berries are an important food resource for numerous species of birds.

(Source Wikipedia)

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp and Concretism

Some background on Chris Sharp and concretism

(Words and images by Chris Sharp)

My first musical memory is of being at infant school and being fascinated by the piano in the hall. We were never allowed to play on it of course, but I was desperate to just push the keys. I never got the chance, but years later, my parents got me a keyboard for Christmas, and that's probably where it all started. I eventually asked (yes, asked!) my parents for piano lessons, and they kindly arranged this, which is where my formal training began. Money was tight, so I practiced on a neighbour's piano, in an unheated front room (freezing in the winter), until my parents bought me a second-hand piano.

A few years later, as a teenager in the early '90s, I got into sampling and using trackers on my Amiga computer, which is where I started in electronic music, and managed to learn about MIDI and general studio stuff in college studios too. Perhaps as a sign of things to come, in my Amiga music tinkerings, there was a heavy element of speech samples...

I did my ABRSM piano grades, and eventually took my music degree in the mid-late '90s, coupling a strong classically-trained background with a passion for audio and music technology. Since then I've played in bands and concentrated on my home studio, often producing songs for friends, and writing music for the occasional TV commercial and short film, as well as my own projects.

The concretism project was started mid-2010, after I bought my first analogue synthesiser (the Roland Alpha Juno, which still constitutes the core concretism sound), and has evolved over the last few years to reflect my childhood terrors. There's a strong flavour of grim Cold War Britain, as well as sinister public information films, '70s occultism and even CFF movies. The name is simply a reference to the building material (not to musique concrète, as some have suggested), as it's literally the solid stuff of factories, municipal buildings and nuclear bunkers – all influences on me. At the centre of most tracks is a strong melody or riff – this is generally how I'll start a piece, and then everything is fitted around that. At some point, I'll have an idea of what the track is about, and maybe seek out suitable speech samples. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and with every track there is a fair amount of material that is ditched. I feel strongly about creating everything from scratch, and never use any ready-made sounds, riffs or loops. There are at least two major musicians who lost my respect once I found out they lazily lifted most of their sounds straight off a sample CD, so I utterly avoid it. I use tape to artificially age the sound, and will often bounce elements such as drum parts or loops to and from tape during writing. What this does is add a layer of noise, wow and flutter, drop-outs and general gunk, which can't really be done convincingly in the digital domain. Finally, the master file will often be bounced to tape, at a speed relevant to the amount of degradation I'm after.

I use Cubase SX3 on an old (2005) PC for all sequencing, and Sound Forge 8 for fine editing and mastering. I also have Pro Tools 9 on my Macbook Pro synced to Cubase via MIDI, but (bar recording duties) is used purely as a soft-sampler and soft-synth host. As well as the Alpha Juno, I also have an SH-101 (which I can get to sync with a bit of fiddling), an Amdek RMK-100 analogue drum machine, a couple of Mackie mixers and a big bunch of ROMplers and condenser microphones.

I have worked as a studio sound engineer for broadcast and audio post-production since 1999, and chose to go freelance in 2011. I now have a lot of regular clients, and work on a variety of projects including TV dubbing, major videogames, commercials, BBC radio programmes and audiobooks. So basically, after a hard week of pushing waveforms around on a screen, I sit in my studio at home at the weekend, pushing waveforms around on a screen...

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp - Adventures with Concretism - Part 1 - Rabies Warning

Chris Sharp (aka Concretism) is a musical adventurer, genius and fearless researcher.

It is his skills as a researcher, sound artist and musician that lead him to the discovery of Winterberry.

Over the next few days Songs from the Black Meadow will be sharing four key works for you to download.

They are utterly evocative and tap into an uneasy nostalgia for a nightmare past.

Artist of the Week - Chris Sharp - Concretism and the Wiccan Circle

A fantastic video from Concretism that the Ephemeral Man describes as "A magnificent blend of sound and vision." 

concretism - #1 : The Wiccan Circle from [THE KILL SHOP] on Vimeo.

Artist of the Week - Winterberry