English folk musician & singer Sharron Kraus states her pastoral music is inspired by the Third Ear Band...

"Sharron Kraus is a singer, musician and songwriter who both defiantly recasts and tenderly cherishes the folk tradition. Her songs tell intricate tales of rootless souls, dark secrets and earthy joys, the lyrics plucked as sonorously as her acoustic guitar. Utilising voice, field recordings and sparse instrumentation, her new project, 'Pilgrim Chants & Pastoral Trails' attempts to evoke the music embodied within the landscapes of Mid Wales. In Sharron's own words: 

"Driving along the Elan Valley from Rhayader to Aberystwyth one sunny day I had the overwhelming sense that there was music contained in the landscape, waiting to be discovered. I decided to move to Mid-Wales, to a quiet place just north of that valley and try to tap into that music and draw it out. Over a period of two years I walked and drove around the area, criss-crossing the landscape, stopping wherever the magic of the place was too strong to ignore. I took a minidisc recorder with me and recorded the birds, streams and waterfalls, the animals, the wind, and the jet planes that sliced through the quiet. I listened and absorbed as much as possible and then went home and recorded. 

"My initial aim was to record a soundtrack for my own experiences, something to listen to as I drove along the winding mountain roads or walked out in the hills at night, but as the project developed and other musicians added to it, the pieces moved out of the realm of the purely personal and became soundscapes that captured something of this place, unlocked an enchanted world. Musical reference points include Eno's ambient works, Richard Skelton's landscape-inspired pieces, Mike Oldfield's 'Hergest Ridge', Popol Vuh's soundtrack to Herzog's 'Nosferatu' and the music of the Third Ear Band, Fursaxa, Plinth, the latter two being people I've collaborated with." (from Second Language Music site at http://www.secondlanguagemusic.com/news.html)

Listen the full album of this really pastoral music at http://sharronkraus.bandcamp.com/album/pilgrim-chants-pastoral-trails and, beyond the inspiration admitted, decide by yourself if the references are true.

To myself, this sounds are quite near to the gloomy, sinister, esoteric mood of some TEB music ("Macbeth"?). Really English and organic, pagan and ritual... Alchemical? Ipnotic?... and the very impressive vocal textures (i.e. on "Dark Pool" or "Cadair Idris") remind me that masterpiece titled "Parallelograms" by Linda Perhacs (1970)...
The same Rob Young on his seminal book "Electric Eden" (Faber and Faber, London 2010) quotes Kraus in a group of musician "all sallying into the wildwood with dronal, rustic "Dark Britannia" and viewing the tradition through the retrospective of prims like The Wicker Man" (page 604). 

Realised on August 13th, 2013, the record is played by Sharron Kraus (voice, guitar, dulcimer, organ, recorders, drones, percussion, field recordings), Harriet Earis (harp),
Mark Wilden (drums) and Simon Lewis (Korg MS-20). 
Brave English (new) folk music! 

no©2013 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)  

Another Italian book about psychedelic folk with quotations on the Third Ear Band.

Gino Dal Soler, Italian journalist of "Blow Up" magazine, is the author of another book about acid/psychedelic folk music titled "The Circle is Unbroken: forty years of psychedelic and visionary folk" printed on January 2011 by Tutte Edizioni (235 pages, € 16,00. You can get a copy writing at http://www.blowupmagazine.com/prod/the-circle-is-unbroken.asp).

Soon an interview with the writer to deepen his point of view about the band...

no©2011 Luca Ferrari 

Third Ear Band quoted on an Italian book about English electric folk music.

As reported some months ago at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-italian-book-on-english-electric.html Italian writer/musician Antonello Cresti has written a book on "electric English folk" titled "Fairest Isle" (Aereostella, € 17.00) where a prominent position is reserved to the Third Ear Band. You can buy a copy through the Web site of the home publishing at http://www.aereostella.it/libri.php.

Apart some obvious well-known references to the band's history (mainly based on my book "Necromancers of the drifting West", 1997), the most important aspect of the book is the author's attempt to analyze his musical project.

On a chapter titled "Pariah" (= outcast), Cresti writes about the TEB as one of the band "more radically experimental", a "one-off and unique experience", "probably the most  remote and isolated outpost in all the epic of new English folk music", here  named "wyrd folk" from a definition coined in 1990 by American artist Tim Renner.

The author claims TEB music is deep-rooted in psychedelia (for cultural aptitude) and folk - for the use of acoustic instruments and above all "for the strong, almost sacral, bond with their place of origin, even if inexorably "elsewhere" as regards to the map of musical orthodoxys of yesterday and nowdays".

Summing up the main phases of the band's history, the writer attributes to Glen Sweeney the role of deus ex machina, "perfect and sincretic fruit of many urges and illusions of a generous age as that hippy generation".

Strangely scarce the list of musicians influenced by the TEB: apart the Italian Aktuala and Franco Battiato's "Sulle corde di Aries" albums, Cresti quotes just the Xenis Emputae Travelling Band and our Sedayne... ignoring other not less important experiences (documented in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/italian-musician-fabio-zuffanti-demixed.html and http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/some-italian-tebs-little-nephews.html).

A specifc paragraph of the book is reserved to the analysis of the Elements album, with some interesting references to the links to the ancient celtic tradition of the cover lettering: "... infact it remembers the medieval Christian art and masterworks of miniature as that included on Lindisfarne's Gospels, works miniatured around 600 BC at the monastery founded by Saint Aidano on the wild isle of Lindisfarne, Northumberland...".

About the music on the album, Cresti underlines the relations with the ancient Greek philosophers (as Empedocle) and their idea of four elements as roots founding all the things.
“Sweeney and friends, with a tireless attempt of cultural hybridization, (…) pay their attention to a subject that, become famous thank to very wide speculations of Mediterranean world, it had appeared in many ancient civilizations all around the world: so the band’s holistic and pantheistic idea has contrasted to any materialistic and immanent conception of being ontology”.

Analyzing the four tracks, interesting the thinkings about "Earth" and "Water": on the first tune, Cresti claims "it's one of highest point reached by the band, even similar to the Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"", with a "pure musicality, where the melodic element becomes primordial rhythm".

About "Water" (my favourite ever!), he states "it's the descriptive peak reached by the band: it starts with some naive sound effects, then the composition unravels on a brilliant counterpoint of strings that symbolize the conflicting current of water".

In short, for the author the album it's "the experimental top of wyrd folk, the work where different processes of cultural and stilistic hybridation, even if in a reference frame strongely Britannic, have raised to fertile state of the art".

An important contribution to the comprehension of the TEB's still  quite obscure epic, very rare in Italian music journalism.

Cresti is working now on a new book dedicated to the English "esoteric folk", with some new analysis about the Third Ear Band (and maybe also an interview with myself about the cultural sources...).
Of course, I'll try  to document it for your esclusive pleasure...

no©2011 Luca Ferrari