I’m absolutely fascinated by Old Music, have been ever since I was maybe 15-16 years old. Go figure…
One Xmas in the early 1980’s, I asked my mother for “something medieval” for a present, and she went to the biggest record store in Helsinki and got me, of all things, David Munrow’s “Music of the Gothic Era”, the full three LP box set, decidedly not knowing what kind of treasure she’d gotten me. “This is what the salesperson recommended”, she innocently said, looking at my stunned expression.
So anything that sounds like it’s from between 1000 and 1500 is really cool with me – and in the case of this album, I emphasize the “sounds like it’s from” angle.
I only recently discovered and fell for Blowzabella – for reasons stated above – and, looking into the band information, the name of Nigel Eaton came up, and the hurdy-gurdy as his instrument.
Finland has no history with the hurdy-gurdy, so I only knew what it looks like and that it has a handle you turn to create the sound, but I had no real idea what it sounds like.
But as I checked Nigel’s own artist info, I realized he’s just released this album; I immediately launched my Bandcamp app and there Lymington Fair was. So this commentary is based solely on the music on this album; I don’t know if the tunes are his or old compositions or trad, sorry.
But what I do know is that I keeled over in about 4,7 seconds as the title tune began to play. The layered sound of the instrument, the evocative melody, the combination of repetition and gradual transformation of the themes… I felt as if I was in a time machine, thrown headlong into some area of Europe centuries ago, and yet this music felt very here and now, almost tangible.
This applies to all seven tunes on Lymington Fair; some of them lean more on melody, some more on that almost Philip Glass / Steve Reich kind of hypnotic repetion and gradual evolution, and A Beaulieu Air is just beautiful, bringing out the organ-like features of the instrument. All the tunes are, for me, spellbinding.
As the instrument and what it takes to master it are terra incognita for me, I can only assume, based on what I’m hearing, that Nigel Eaton really is a consummate master of this art. Everything is in place, the music breathes and takes me to journeys unknown until now. The only downside is that Lymington Fair only plays for 28 minutes. I would like double that, at least, please.
FolkNotes 