Music for the Deep Woods: A Collaboration.

This is Laura Sheeran's debut EP Music for the Deep Woods which can be downloaded here. Laura is a a creative powerhouse. She is a visual spectacle, an aural wonder, a photographic genius, a siren, an hallucination, a brilliant child! I love her for her openness and her attitudes of abundance and creative exchange. Her work stems from a place of absolute wonder and imagination - she is as abundant in her production as she is inspirational to those who are priviledged to be connected to her in friendship and collaboration.

And I was proud collaborator on Laura's first release, writing lyrics for two tracks, 'Lupine Rot' and 'Under Ice'. There is definitely an Angela Carter sycronicity between the imagery Laura creates around her and the sound she so tenderly and vigorously cultivates. I think I have tapped into that engery in the following poems. I am including the full transcript of the lyrics here, in their original form:

Under Ice
By Emily Aoibheann

It's hotter than you think in here!
It's hotter than you think,
under ice.
It slaps of cold and stings of heat –
"I'm burning, I'm buring under here!
I am buring! I'm on fire!"

I am strangled and I float,
Elated and bereft.
The sufocation makes me weep, seeping –
"I'm crying can't you see
I'm dead, I'm dead!"

Tears stream and freeze,
My liquid grave is made of tears –
My eyes, the water, they are one,
I can see for centuries!

My heart,
It is red red red,
My breast,
It's bursting.
My lips,
Are red red
My tongue…

Is red –
Binded in the icy tomb
Swimming in the coldest womb, my hollow mother –

Pushes me down
it pleases me
You show me you are ugly,
You are coming to kiss me!

You touch my insides, outside.
You tickle and stab.
Trickle trickle –

I sink.


Lupine Rot
By Emily Aoibheann

my friend's lover looks like a wolf
he has a black beard and green eyes
his beard curls round like a wrought iron stairs
and wraps her fingers with black rings.

She cries and tears do dot his cheeks
A smile across his lupine face
And eyes that cast a blinding spell
They bring her to her knees again

Laura posted this on her savage blog a few days ago.

Process.

What's this? It's further process... and it's all in the build up for Sinner's Circus on the 7th May and Blackbird's much anticipated solo debut!

'Blackbird is actually a chameleon. As much a performer today as a writer this evening as a bike mechanic tomorrow with as many faces to match, Blackbird is musician and artist Emily Aoibheann's adopted performative pseudonym, an avine aspiration from the burgeoning aerialiste. Having begun her public career in the much loved all woman band 'Party Weirdo' as the celebrated drummer, Blackbird's musical and theatrical interest – as well as a strict determination to involve herself in surreal, abundant and collaborative environments – has drawn her down the bright alley of burlesque and cabaret, a branch of performance art that suits the dark-bird for its controversy, dynamism and gaudy glamour, a site of satire, mutability, ingenuity, a playground for those grown-ups who long for Mammy's dress-up-basket, or another world'.

photo©Hannah-Clare Gordon

Thanks to artist Sarah Sheil for her amazing skills and generous attitude and photographer Ross Waldron for taking some snaps of the heft of process! I'm so excited.

Process.

What's this? It's a process... Just be HERE! Clue: "Oh little Blackbird please change your song..."

Yours in mischief,

..................................

Salon Decca 75

Today, we started the gramophone overhaul:
It's a Salon Decca, probably dating back to 1930s, no. 75. Retrieved from my Dad's family home along with an old Pilot Radio (probably 1950s) which has been sent to a hi-fi man for internal assessment!
Old Salon Decca was eaten away by wood worm, but the mechanism still works perfectly! So gorgeous! Wish I had a video to show you how the mechanism spins so easily and silently. What a brilliant invention.



The plywood exterior was completely eaten away with wood worm infestation, so we had to take it completely apart in order to remove the central mechanism.







We took everything apart, all the important bits that will go back on once we make the new external casing.

The needle stem:

The sound box which was underneath the central panel:



The turn table (minus the old velvet covering):



The lid had already come off long before!


As had the casing, both which needed measuring for our recreation:


Daddio did some excellent drawings of the central panel before we dumped it (boo-hoo) so that we can make a new one:

And we made an inventory with all the screws that need replacing for the different parts, the hinges, bolts, brackets and whatever else has come out if the machine that will need to go back into the machine!


All in all, it was a lovely way to spend a day in the garden (in between feeds and a spot of sunshine) before I ran inside to boast about my gramophone exploits and revel in the nerd that I have become. I'll be drawing up diagrams of different screw-threads next, guffaw!

BEASTS

The Company of Wolves (that year again!: 1984) film still:

Sychronicity in Berlin: Two Books

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