Andy Letcher

The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one, or so sung Justin Hayward on Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds. But what of the chances of Martians playing the bagpipes? Two million? More? Not so, for as this welcome release reveals, the bagpipe is indeed the instrument of choice for the Martian musical virtuoso.
Knowledge of the existence of Martian bagpipes has apparently been with us since Biblical times, though rumours of extant sets in the hands of US Intelligence remain flatly denied by the authorities. Occasionally UFO enthusiasts claim actually to have heard the unearthly warble of the Martian bagpipes, and, indeed a rare if shaky recording of just such an occurrence is included here. But it is in Russia, apparently, that the Martian bagpipes have exerted their most profound influence, the Soviets launching several missions to Mars during the seventies to make field recordings. President Brehznev, even, played these poorly known pipes, while Russian composer, Edvard Shlinke, went so far as to write a symphony in J# for Vincent Manlove, darling of the nascent Moscow Martian-bagpiping scene.
Hold on there just a minute! J#? Surely someone is having a joke here? Well yes they are. The Martian bagpipes are, in this reality at least, the brainchild of otherwise earthbound bagpipe maker, Dominic Allen. The bastard lovechild of an octopus and a kazoo, Allen’s ‘Martian’ pipes are made from lurid red plastic, come adorned with a sinister red eye, and have a bag wrapped in fake fur. I am told that the double-reeded drone and the single-reeded chanter connect via the same chamber, enabling the, ahem, ‘musician’ to explore a range of subtly tuned multiphonic possibilities. In other words the Martian bagpipes make an unearthly racket.
Music of the Martian Bagpipes, then, presents us with a variety of pieces played on this most extraordinary of instruments, accompanied, in the main, by samples, beats and detuned and heavily portamentoed synth parts. It is all done with an understated humour which, in small doses (I’ve yet to manage the whole album in one sitting), is very very funny and had me laughing out loud. ‘Three Easy Pieces’ are anything but, whilst the Martian lullaby (‘we shall stomp on the skulls of our enemies then slide about on their brains’ ) gives the impression of what it must be like to be trepanned without anaesthetic.
How on earth should we categorise this album? It would be too easy, I think, to dismiss this as a one joke curiosity. For one thing there is a fine tradition of writing music inspired by the Red Planet (from Holst to Jeff Wayne, via the theramin of 50s sci-fi) into which this album fairly belongs. For another there are ranks of musicians, from free-jazzers like Paul Dunmall and Valentin Clastrier, to sound artists like the Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, whose sonic noise confusion challenges us to reconsider the boundaries of music. But where the album truly belongs is surely alongside those by artists and bands such as Gong, Ivor Cutler, Vivian Stanshall and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band – surreal, irreverent and dadaesque.
Whatever else this album may or may not be, it is outrageous, inflammatory, provocative and at times strangely compelling. I can guarantee that it presents bagpipe music like no other you will ever have heard, so buy it now before it becomes a collector’s item.

Available from: www.screamingmavis.com

Photo Copyright © Andy Letcher 2006

As someone with a longstanding interest in all things unusual, folkloric, pagan and obscure, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance has been on my radar for years. I’ve heard many a tale from friends of how, when summer teeters on the edge of autumn, antler-carrying dancers weave their way through this otherwise unremarkable Staffordshire village; about how, in their day-long bobbing and weaving, the men of Abbots Bromley trace out some ancient rite, a half-remembered salute to a god with horns, a resonant act of sympathetic magic to stir the hunt and quicken the catch. “You simply have to go” they said.
It was with a certain amount of excitement, then, that after stumbling across an article about the dance I discovered not only that Abbots Bromley is just a couple of hours drive away but also that this year’s dance was due to take place in a fortnight. My mind quickly made up I emailed another pagan-minded friend and we hatched a plan to go.
We arrived mid-afternoon on the day of the dance, parked the car on the edge of the village and excitedly strode to the village green. Awaiting us were a handful of stalls selling a very English selection of cakes, jam, hand-woven baskets, plus fifty or so people sipping tea or supping pints. There was an expectant, urgent feeling in the air but the action was still further on. Making our way down the street we saw a crowd blocking the road, heard the sound of music and above it the rhythmic twang of a metal triangle beating time. And there, just peeping over the top, antlers! Betraying our inexperience we elbowed our way through the crowd to get a better look.
At first glance, it must be said, the dance seems strangely anti-climactic, disappointing even. Used to seeing feather-hatted, ragged-coated Morris Men leaping high and clashing sticks on a sunny May-morning I was expecting something, well, a bit more red-blooded than the swaying, gambolling quadrille that greeted us: it seemed effete, almost a little camp. It was only later, when I tried on a set of antlers for the obligatory tourist photo, that I realised quite how heavy they are. To last one dance, let alone the day, requires extraordinary stamina. Small wonder that no one leaps – to wend and weave is more than enough. “It’s a funny old dance, really” a visiting Morris dancer confessed to me later (after having tried and failed to recruit me to his dwindling team of men). “But it’s part of our English tradition you know. I wouldn’t miss it for the world”. And after we’d followed the men through the streets for an hour or more, watched the dance several times, I began to understand how he felt.
For the Horn dancers – who all belong to one extended family – the day begins early. At half-past seven in the morning the ‘horns’ – which are otherwise padlocked in place and may not leave the village – are taken down from their hangings inside the church and blessed by the Vicar. Then the costumed dancers begin tracing their well-worn day-long itinerary around the parish during which they perform the same dance steps perhaps a hundred times.
Each dance is announced by ‘The Jester’ – who these days also has the unfortunate job of liaising with Police and Health & Safety – haranguing people to get out of the way, to mind their backs and let the dancers through. The trotting procession divides into two streams which weave around each other in a spiralling fashion before forming a circle that splits again into two facing lines. In and out, in and out, like rutting stags, six men shouldering two sets of antlers, the one set painted black with gold tips, the other white with black. With them a young boy playing the triangle and another, slightly older, with a mock bow and arrow that he clicks towards a snapping hobby-horse. Two musicians propel the dance with their favourite swaggering tunes squeezed out on accordions (for the elder of the two, this was his eightieth consecutive dance: as a boy he began on the triangle then worked his way up through the hierarchy of roles). Costumed children and a man dressed as a woman, ‘Maid Marion’ – also armed with a vulvic spoon and priapic rod – shake collection tins in time to the tunes.
Round and round the village they go, dancing in the High Street, in cul-de-sacs, on Lady Bagshots’ lawn at the grandly titled Blithfield Hall, and of course outside the village’s many hostelries. Finally, at about 9 o’clock in the evening, after one last triumphant dance in front of The Crown, the horns are marched back to the church, where, after a final blessing they are replaced on the hangings from which they will sit out the year. Justifiably knackered the dancers retire to the pub.
What does it all mean? Ask the dancers and they will give you the ‘vestigial fertility dance’ shtick, though with a wry smile and little conviction. Certainly the nature of the dance makes it open to a pagan interpretation. White horns with black tips sparring against black horns tipped with gold: surely this is a rite to mark the eternal battle of summer and winter? And surely every click of the bow and arrow is a magic act to ensure a full stomach in the lean months ahead, every thwack of the Jester’s inflated bladder to quicken another kind of swelling belly? Certainly this is what the smattering of ostentatiously-dressed neo-pagan followers would have us believe.
Historians might beg to differ. The earliest record of the dance comes from Tudor times, 1532 to be exact, but with no mention of the horns. It is most probable that the dance begun as one of many hobby-horse processions found in the Midlands. The horns, actually reindeer antlers (which are genuinely old and of unknown provenance), were presumably added at a later date. The dance was abandoned for a period of about one hundred years around the time of the Civil War only to be revived in the early eighteenth century, at which point it was moved from its usual date at Christmas time to ‘the Monday following the first Sunday after the fourth of September’. Given the evidence pagan origins seem most unlikely; more probable that it was just another way by which the ever-resourceful poor could extract money from the rich during the hard months of the winter.
So much for academe. In snatches of overheard conversation you can hear the gathered throng of tourists and visitors offering their sixpence worth, pagan this and folklore that, all water off a duck’s back to the inscrutable dancers. For, spend half a day in their company, watching the nods and gestures, the ribaldry and badinage amongst friends and family, and you begin to catch a glimpse of what is really going on here. This is a community event, a celebration of local, rural, working-class pride, a relic of peasantry not paganism. “You can come here and watch and follow and wonder and tell us what it all means”, their cagey looks say, “but this is ours and nothing you can do or say will take it away from us”. And you know they are absolutely right.
And sensing this I found the day all the more moving than if it really were some atavistic throwback to a heathen age. Sometimes the dancers flagged with tiredness and we willed them on; at others they quipped and sparred with heckling friends and we laughed along with them. Once, towards the end and amidst many guffaws, the women-folk of the village took the horns to see if they could do any better. It was like being a guest at someone’s annual treasured but slightly unruly family get-together: outside but let in just a little.
Right at the end, when the dancers made their way down the High Street to the welcoming throng of two hundred or more, the sheer spirit of the thing caught me. Tired but elated the men wove in and out, in and out for the very last time, the dance carrying them effortlessly, driving them on. It was one of those rare liminal moments where people and place and the past click together in such a way that we are lifted out of the everyday, if only for a moment. And by the end, even as my legs ached in sympathy with the dancers’, I felt transformed, renewed and revitalised, ready to face the dreaded onset of winter. The word is overused, has become tacky and tawdry, but the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is, in its understated and English way, a magical thing. After watching the horns put safely to bed, and feeling the first chill of autumn in the air, we got back in the car and began the long journey home, vowing to come again. I am sure that we will.

I see that, at last, 'Folk Britannia' is to get its terrestrial airing starting this Monday 11th at 11.20pm on BBC. By all accounts an excellent history of the British folk scene post 1960s this was the programme that tipped me into buying a digibox - it was only broadcast on BBC 4. After two days fiddling about with cables, menus and inadequate manuals I failed spectacularly to get the box to talk to my video and recorded an hour of fuzz, not folk. Conceding defeat the box was dutifully returned the next day and I've been in a luddite sulk ever since...which makes me a true folkie, I guess.

I've had a run of bad migraines - three in a week - all requiring bed in a darkened room, each lasting twelve hours, unmitigated misery. What saved me yesterday was Radio 4. Front Row followed by Madame Bovary, then a high-brow debate about the ethics (or not) of animal rights and finally a documentary about searching for planets. Even as my head emptied itself of meaningful content, Radio 4 did its level best to fill it again.

It's been a week of the Wicker Man. I read Allan Brown's excellent nerdfest tribute to the original, 'Inside The Wicker Man: The Morbid Ingenuities'; I took part in a 'burning' organized for a Swindon-based IT company for their summer jolly; and I've just been to see the re-make.

Oh dear dear dear, what a dreadful film it is. What on earth possessed them? It lacks all the charm, wit, menace and subtlety of the original and has been turned into a horror-by-numbers, 'gee aren't the hicks strange?' melodrama. In fact it has been shoehorned into a bog standard Hollywood format with the requisite amount of (unconvincing) romance and pop-psychology. Do American audiences really need everything spelt out to them in so ham-fisted a manner?

What is so clever about the original (WM1) is that right until the very end it tricks you into sympathising with the islanders, not Howie the uptight and priggish policeman. Let's face it, those islanders are having a rather good time of it. Then, with its dreadful climax, the rug is pulled from out beneath your feet. In the remake (WM2) the islanders' paganism/lifestyle is repellent from the start - your sympathies lie with Cage, the put upon world-weary cop, just trying to do a decent job.

Secondly the paganism in WM2 - from which all the lovely folklore of WM1 is excised - is incoherent, vague and unbelievable and seems to play a minor part in the islanders' lives. Consequently the climax just seems silly - why on earth would they do that? The idea of a crop/honey failure on an island where the sun seems to shine 12 hours a day is likewise incredible. And aren't matriarchies supposed to be peaceful?

Happily the film contains one of the most unintentionally funny lines of any movie I've seen - when Cage pulls out his gun and screams "Lady, step away from the bike." At the screening I went too the audience just laughed when the hapless Cage meets his fate.

I can't help thinking that the money would have been better spent digging up the M3 to find the (supposedly) lost reels of the original so that Shaffer's brilliant script can, at last, be realised in full. We can but dream.

Oh, and though it is buried beneath the turgid score you can just here the sound of a rauschpfeife as the villagers process towards their ritual. It doesn't appear in the credits but this is actually a track, Carnival of Bones, by the medieval band Paescod from their album, Fible Fable. I played with Paescod as their extra hired hand on and off for years and was approached by one of WM2's producers about using the track. I put him in touch with the band (now reformed as Nonimus) and voila. Sadly I'm not playing bagpipes on it, otherwise I'd be watching the money come rolling in right now (hah - in my dreams!).

Got my hands on the new Circulus album at last, and what a treat it is, an altogether slicker, better produced affair than their first. Whereas 'The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to be Sent' sounded like a bunch of mates playing down the pub this is a much more professional offering. The costumes are (mostly) better, the design is excellent (top marks for the photo of the leering pie), the lyrics are still refreshingly dotty (how many bands do you know that slip in the telelphone number of their favourite skip-hire company into a song?), and the all important crumhornery sits much better in the mix. Not many albums demand an immediate second listen, but this one defintiely had me reaching for the repeat button.

There are some fine prog moments here: great rhythm changes in the opening 'Dragon Dance'; lovely expansive chord progressions in 'Willow Tree'; some daft Moog buffoonery in 'Bouree'; and a IIm7-V7 coda to the closing 'Reality's a Fantasy' that frankly does not go on long enough. They're a much tighter outfit all round (and not just in the cod-piece department), though full credit must go to Oliver Parfitt whose keyboard playing is really driving the band into some delightful Caravan-esque improvisations. Only beef: surely Sam Kelly should get to lead on more than one song? And, one wonders, where can they go from here? I hope they haven't painted themselves into a corner (however lovely, hobbit-, dragon-, and goblet-filled that corner is)...

A great album, though, one that brought many a smile to my face and that, God knows, might even herald the return of the long prophesied prog revival. Is that a sword I see before me, rising up out of a misty lake to the sound of a steadily swelling organ...?

www.circulus.org