VA - The Forest / The Wald (2016)

The Forest / The Wald is a study and collection of work that reflects on fragments and echoes of tales from the woodland and its folklore.
Such wooded realms are deeply embeded in our folk and popular
culture stories: their boughs and undergrowth being seen as places where spirits both good and bad may reside, visitors from elsewhere in the cosmos have laid down roots or where unwary travellers can come undone.
The album takes as one of its initial reference points Electric Eden author Rob Young’s observations of the roots of the word folk as being “...the music of the ‘Volk’, a word born of the Teutonic Wald, the wild wood where society was organised ad hoc, bottom-up and frequently savage...”; places where rituals endured and perplexed their heirs.
Although today they are often tamed and managed it takes but a wandering into the heart of one to realise just how near to being far from the comforts and securities of civilisation we are.
In amongst The Forest / The Wald can be found field recording folk that captures greenwood rituals performed in the modern day, echoes of fantastical childhood rhymes, sylvan siren calls that tremble through tangles of branches, electronics pressed into the summoning of otherworldly arboreal creations unearthed amidst the creeping thickets and elegies to woodland intrustions, solitudes and seasons.

Tracks:
01 Bare Bones - The Abney Ritual (5:22)
02 Magpahi - Hawthorn Heart (2:19)
03 Polypores - Deep Undergrowth (6:56)
04 Time Attendant - Fantastic Mass (5:25)
05 David Colohan - Waldeinsamkeit (8:57)
06 Richard Moult - The Hand of Auctumnus (8:00)
07 Sproatly Smith - Tomo's Tale (4:12)
08 The Hare And The Moon - A Whisper in the Woods (feat. Alaska) (6:37)
09 The Rowan Amber Mill - Ocarina Procession (3:27)
10 The Seance - Trees Grew All Around Her (feat. Lutine) (5:41)
11 Cosmic Neighbourhood - Equinox (3:27)
12 A Year in the Country - Where Once We Wandered Free (5:06)