"Alchemy": an esoteric record for initiates.

As a powerful musical/visual/conceptual device, “Alchemy” stands as a really unique work in the Popular Music history.

"Alchemy" CD booklet cover (Drop Out Records 1999)

As on a recent essay Italian writer, Antonello Cresti writes, “this album is full as ever of musical invitations (all the tracks are instrumental) to take a more deep and conscious form of spirituality up” (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/01/tebs-cultural-sources-on-italian-book.html).

Absolutely right, but probably it’s much more.

Because if it’s quite easy to discover some elements of cultural suggestions just based on the tracks’ titles, linked to the feelings of its time (the epic Sixties…), in my opinion, “Alchemy” was thought as a strong summa for an alternative life. A philosophic (music) treatise for a New Age.

Also for this, this album seems to transcend its time…

I’ve already written about the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” in this archive (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/08/tebs-egyptian-book-of-dead.html) as a piece of incredibly scary sounds intended for going with the dead through his death. Music composed to remember us our ephemeral life and the responsibility to live with an ethical approach to human things.

But what about the album's other tracks?

Druids painted by Charles Knight (1845)

It's easy to state that “Alchemy” (1969) is conceptually more complex than “Third Ear Band” (1970), even if for music critics the second is generally considered better than the first. Anyway, here we have a stone circle and a druid, surely alluding to the pagan druidic ancient tradition; the direct quotation of the ancient Book of the dead (Egyptian history related); the dragon lines, as Cresti explains in his book, “a clear musical transposition of pioneer theories of John Michell, who had transposed Chinese tradition of "Lung Mei" on English culture and told about "Dragon Paths". These "Lung Mei" (an expression we can in fact translate as "Dragon Paths") are energetic lines discovered by ancient Chinese; from the heart of a dragon, usually laid in a valley among the hills, springs of energy have radiated, as it occurs with the "Ley Lines"".

In "Alchemy" we have also Dave Tomlin's “Lark Rise” (based on Flora Thompson’s book “Lark Rise to Candleford”) that celebrates a vanished bucolic utopia as documented elsewhere here (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/01/dave-tomlins-lark-rise-origins-cultural.html).

Swinside stone circle (West of Broughton in Furness)

And we can listen also to three apparently more obscure tracks - “Ghetto Raga”, “Mosaic” and “Area Three” - all related to the idea of space: a space to protect (thanks to the snakes on the cover...), a ghetto, a place for Hermetics where to practice alchemy (the cover concept) and turn the poor metals in gold (Prima Materia).

 Asking Dave Tomlin about this idea of space (January 24th, 2012), he writes to me: "I could speculate a little. "Area three" comes I think from the film world. It is a forbidden place; maybe dedicated to government secret experiments on... humans? There is a place like that in the Russian film 'Stalker' - Tarkowski, I think -, which would tell you all.
I think they used "Ghetto Raga" just because it sounds good. Ghettos are run down areas where poor people, usually of the same race live (Jews etc.). So Ghetto gives a rough type image, and raga is another racy word, although it's doubtful if any of the band studied Indian music. So together the two words create an interesting effect. No more than that...".

Byzantine mosaic (Galla Placidia Mausoleum - Ravenna, Italy)

But a ghetto of raga, where religious musicians play ragas besieged by the (post) modern world, could be the same area three (three as the TEB musicians?), a place for (musical) alchemic experiments...

Thus a record as a clear powerful metaphor alluding to turn bad music in good music, a superficial/commercial listening to a deep one, a materialistic life to a spiritual one…

I think “Alchemy” is a coherent, integrated device of ideas related to a definite conception of life - very distant from the usual Sixties Egyptian ephemera of fashion.

The best work ever produced by the band and one of the best albums of its time (no Egyptian junk, please!).

Maybe an alchemic product itself!?

A detail of the egg (the Great alchemic Opera) from "Alchemy" front cover

As Glen Sweeney said about the TEB music, "the music is the music of the Druids, released from the unconscious by the alchemical process, orgasmic in its otherness, religious in its oneness communicating beauty and magic via abstract sounds whilst playing without ego enables the musicians to reach a trance-like stage, a "high" in which the music produces itself. Each piece is as alike or unlike as blades of grass or clouds" (from the original 1969 Isle of Wight concert programme).

And again, just around the period when "Alchemy" was recorded: "We are beginning to move into some strange musical areas, doing a piece we call Druid. Once or twice when we've played this thing, we've gone into a weird sort of experience we call a 'Time-shift'. Nobody really knows what it is. The whole Druid piece is repetitive and extremely hypnotic and yet you have some of the instruments doing far out things so that a fantastic tension is built up. It's like alchemy. The alchemical emphasis is on the endless repetition of experiments, doing the same thing over and over again, and waiting for some sort of X-factor to appear. This is more or less what we do when we play. And our X-factor is this time-shift thing".

"It happened once at the London Arts Lab, and as we played, it seemed as if time had slowed down and we had drifted into a completely different dimension. And when we finished, nobody moved at all. They were kind of stuck there. So I felt that perhaps it had happened to them too. So that's the thing we are trying to get into. Although it can be quite a strain during a public performance, like living on the edge of a cliff, since nobody knows what might happen. To be on stage and feel it happening can be quite frightening. You go out of yourself, and when you come to, you discover yourself on stage with hundreds of people staring at you. You get this split-second thought: 'Have I been playing? Have I ruined the whole thing?' In a way, it's very similar to meditation and mantra chanting, which is why I feel what we are doing has a very religious depth" (from "Gandalf's Garden" #4, 1969, interviewed by Muz Murray).

Tomlin clarifies me (January 30th, 2012) that "in the mid-Sixties, there were many different influences. One was the legend of King Arthur's Court. Another was the Aliens - flying-saucers - messages from the stars. Also Blake's "Jerusalem", the Ley-Lines, Ramana Maharishi. And the mysterious arts of Alchemy.
There was an Alchemical saying of the time: 'When the sound of the music changes the walls of the city shake', which the Third Ear used at one time. Glen was very much drawn to the Alchemical myth. In fact a few years before he died he kept an ex-WWII torpedo-boat on a north London canal. Its name was 'ALCHEMY', he and Carolyn used to roar around the canals in it and everyone had to get out of the way; they were the terror of the waterways. I sometimes visited them on the boat and when Glen died she took the compass from the boat and gave it to me (this compass came from Glen Sweeney's boat Alchemy)...".

As in the past, people used to write books for initiates, in modern times, musicians play records to open the mind and soul of people ("Happy new ears!" John Cage wrote): Third Ear Band has left us a beautiful, scary record of magic/esoteric/philosophic music for the everyday life & death... 
Also for this reason sometimes we return to it as a sort of breviary, listening to little drops of it as a thaumaturgical magic potion!

"Alchemy" CD back cover (Drop Out Records 1999)

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

"Four Horses" to "Lark Rise".

As Third Ear Band music is still living in some great new music composed and played today... 

Here we have a new composition by Sedayne inspired by Dave Tomlin's "Lark Rise" (inspired by Thompson's book "Lark Rise to Candleford"...).

Listen to it  and enjoy at: http://soundcloud.com/sedayne-fiddlesangs/four-horses-to-lark-rise

His author says: ""Four Horses" comes from the singing of Hocky Feltwell and can be heard on "The Voice of the People" volume 5, though I think something of John Kirkpatrick's version may have crept in there too somewhere along the way. It too deals with a lost idyll, lost to us anyway, a vignette of vanished country life that chimes nicely (I think) in with Dave Tomlin's horse-drawn adventures in the heady days of the sixties, which is to say innocently, peaceably, and an era as much vanished as that they were seeking along the vestigial byways of forgotton Albion, long since ruined along with so much of our fast vanishing rural heritage - the true soul of England's dreaming".

THE LYRICS:

"There was a young fellow who first drove a team

And he took great delight boys in keeping them clean
And in keeping them clean, boys, he showed a good colour
And he gained a good character by being a good fellow

And his first horse was a white horse as white as any milk
His second horse was a black horse her coat shone like silk
The middle horse was a bay horse, bay spot on her brow
And his shaft horse was a chestnut her coat shone like gold

And he drove them along til he came to the fair
He watered them here and he baited them there
He paid up his reckoning just like a good man
And they said here comes a team of horses so great and so grand

And he drove them along til they came to the pond
And he watered them here and he drove them along
His feet being weary, his legs being tired,
And his waggon being empty he jumped up to ride

And he drove them all home and unharnessed them all
There was Captain, there was Short, boys, there was Boxer and Ball.
He spread out their bedding and laid them to rest
And he always kept thinking straight home is the best!" 

Thanks Sedayne for your great music, deeply inscribed in the purest tradition of the Third Ear Band! 

As Glen and Dave would say: "Nice one!".

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Dave Tomlin's "Lark Rise": origins & cultural references..

A recent object of debate here, Dave Tomlin's "Lark Rise" was quoted in the Antonello Cresti's book on the esoteric English folk music (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/01/tebs-cultural-sources-on-italian-book.html).

The author wrote about it: "The incredible cultural background of Sweeney & C. shows to be much wider than one could imagine: for example, on "Lark Rise" the band tributes to one of the most influential character of pastoral revival, the composer Vaughan Williams, author of the legendary "The Lark Ascending"".

Reading this, TEB fan and musician Sedayne (Sean Breadin) commented: "I think it's more likely that the earthy folk simplicity of Tomlin's "Lark Rise" is more obviously rooted in Flora Thompson's "Lark Rise to Candleford" which celebrates a vanished bucolic utopia. As such it's the anthithesis of "The Lark Ascending" and maybe was intended as such given the more alternative routes (roots) taken by Tomlin on his travels, as oppose to the more overtly bourgeois take on the pastoral indulged in by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was instrumental in a far more taxonomical/taxidermical approach to English Folk Music which relies less on actual mythic landscapes so essential to "Alchemy", than a romanticism which seems (to my ears) a complete anathema to it.
Sweeney's vision here is one of intuitive misrule; more that of the mischievous trickster than the earnest mystic. I guess his role of catalyst in this process will always keep us guessing!"

                                                                     "Lark Rise" from "Alchemy" album.

Replying to his comment, Cresti has been so honest to admit that "about "Lark Rise", I've just expressed the possible link with Vaughan Williams just in footnote, as a possible way to think about that track. But I'm happy to know that we can find other explanations".

Dave Tomlin (London 2010)

Infact, new explanations has went directly from the composer Dave Tomlin I've contacted on January 9th and 10th by e-mails.
His first laconic answer has been: "Luca. It was indeed inspired by Flora Thompson's 'Lark Rise to Candleford'".
Just before, in a brief interview with him of February 2010, he had explained me that "I composed 'Lark Rise' on violin whilst travelling with horses and carts and came into London just as Glen was recording 'Alchemy' and did just one track before leaving". 

Then, quite unexpectedly, on January 11th he adds:  "I wrote 'Lark Rise' after reading the book in about 1968/9 long before there were any films of it. I was travelling with a group of hippies in horses and carts in the countryside at the time. I will say some more but I wondered if you have ever read my book 'Tales from the Embassy' Vol. II where the whole story is told. If you haven't I can send you some pieces from it which contain the places where the music was composed. This should give you plenty of material to write up. (...) There were also quite a few other folk dances that I wrote at the time and in the book are the written scores of these dances. Let me know if this is interesting and if so I will email the pieces".

The original music of "Lark Rise" painted by Dave Tomlin (courtesy of Dave Tomlin)

So, just because I never read the book, kindly he has sent me an excerpt just about the right period when he composed the track. It's taken from the chapter titled "Priddy Fair" where "Smith" is just Dave Tomlin:

"Towards evening, when the cider-house begins to disgorge its rowdy contents, and red-faced farmers with half-cut wives tumble their way out into the sunset, Smith feels his moment approaching. Twilight is deepening and lights are coming on over the coconut-shy and twinkle around the awnings of the tombola-stall and lucky-dip. Two or three revellers exit the gate in the wall and Smith opens his violin-case and lays it open at his feet. Then, a quick tune-up and he is off. Lark Rise, a new piece he has been working on over the last few days is now finalised, it leaps into life and his bow-arm is fresh and feels strong. He will play till his arm drops off, thus ensuring that the music will be curtailed in a natural and unpredictable manner.
Tipsy farm-lads surround him and mock-dance to the tune, but some of the gypsy wives are moved to lift their skirts saucily as they kick their legs high, while their husbands dance catchy little jigs and stamp their hob-nailed boots. Smith is going like the clappers but knows he cannot stand this pace for long. The dancers spin ever faster, driving up the tempo with claps and stamps and copious juice is spilt from sloshing cider-mugs. Now the Count and a few London girls turn up to further animate the dance, and Muldoon clomps away on the edge of the crowd.

But Smith is already beginning to tire, the effort to maintain this speed soon depletes his energy and his arm is in agony. ‘One more time,’ he thinks, gritting his teeth and plunging once more around the circular piece, and he is only just able to reach the end before his arm drops, squeaking like a rusty hinge to hang throbbing and useless at his side. The dancers want more but he cannot oblige, and unable to persuade him they drift away across the green, still jigging and hopping to try out their luck on the coconut shy. Back at camp Smith counts the takings, almost seven shillings. Not bad, he will live like a lord for some days".

©2006 Dave Tomlin 

Luca Ferrari and Dave (London 2010). Photo by Steve Pank

A new addiction from Dave went on January 13th:
"I took up violin around 1967. There are only a few violin folk styles but there used to be more. There is the Scottish fiddle style. The Irish Fiddle and there used to be a Cumbrian style. I know there used to be some English folk styles and tried to imagine what they might have been like. So when I was travelling with the horses and carts and passing through small villages I was writing some fiddle tunes. They were very simple pieces except in places I altered the time signatures to give them a different flavour. The book 'Lark Rise to Candleford' impressed me very much since it was about English village life before the coming of the motorways etc, and that's what I was looking for".

How happened Glen asked you just that piece of music?
"It was while I was travelling. I came into town for a few days to buy some strings. I ran into Glen in a cafè near the studio. He invited me to do a track on the album and I said I had one new piece called 'Lark Rise'".

Do you remember which was the mood in the studio when did you record the track?
"I didn't know any of the other musicians so can't really say what the mood was although they were all pretty 'moody'".

Flora Thompson

SOME INTERESTING LINKS ABOUT FLORA THOMPSON:

http://www.johnowensmith.co.uk/flora/
http://www.florathompson.co.uk/ 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lark_Rise_to_Candleford 

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)