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LP
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WSR 052LP
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Limited edition LP in a beautiful metallic-printed sleeve. 12 beautiful instrumentals from the Shovel Dance Collective banjo player and instrument maker, conjuring new worlds from the traditional and the cosmic. Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder. At Fargrounds is her third solo album, her first for the Wrong Speed label and the latest in a rich catalogue that repositions the spectral, vulnerable sound of the banjo away from its familiar role as signifier of the past and onto lands brave, new and unexplored.
"...she knows how to knit atmospheres, and does so to especially powerful effect during 'Scene 4b''s three minutes of stunning bowed banjo, yearning with longing and dread, while showing off her talent, curiosity and range"--Jude Rogers
"[Jacken is] an emotive player with high technical ability. Further, she builds banjos and other instruments, and that intimate knowledge of the bones and fibres holding everything together means that her playing has very few cracks"- Foxy Digitalis
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CD
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NEOLITHIC 010CD
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With the start of the first lockdown, Jacken Elswyth inevitably had a sense of place-boundness on her mind. For a while she had wanted to play around with some pieces that didn't go anywhere or develop too much and thought that the lockdown context justified it. She had also been listening to a lot of old folk recordings; going through the Topic Records Voice of the People albums to find songs and tunes to learn. During this period of study, she started to focus on the odd and irregular moments in the recordings -- maybe slips and mistakes, maybe just idiosyncratic ways that people played and transmitted those old tunes. For Six Static Scenes, each piece would explore a fixed idea, taking these slips, flourishes, and idiosyncratic artifacts of folk technique as prompts. The record was originally recorded for Cafe OTO's digital-only Takuroku label and is now being given a full physical and digital release by Neolithic Recordings. Linocut cover artwork is by Alex Mackenzie. "I could listen to this quicksilver picking all day" --The Quietus.
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