Richard Dawson (raucous experimental UK folk racket w/ intense picaresque realness vox)

Only listened to The Hermit so far but yeah incredible. The coda (I guess? Bit long for a coda maybe, idk the final 'tiny cobles' section) had me hypnotised.

thermonuclear challop: this album is if anything _backloaded_

I wasn't. The Fool onwards is perfection

or at least, close to it

seems like a big improvement on 2020. which i found much of fairly flat. lyrically, the move toward the ambiguous, disparate and unresolved is the right one. the 'short stories' on 2020 were far too neat, far too precise. glad he's returned the mystery to his work and understood that it would be false to try to communicate transparently something broken.

I was lucky to get a ticket to see The Hermit film screened this week, it was a deeply moving and affecting piece. Afterwards, Richard was deliberately very evasive about explaining or peeling back any layers. Which had the entirely correct result of leaving you to take it away as your own personal and private experience. Hopefully it'll make its way online at some point.

i think the film is being released online on tuesday

really love the way the last section of "museum" reproduces the central trick from "the rip"

^an astute observation that some fella made in the RYM shoutbox yesterday

https://i.ibb.co/MBDZDgT/Screenshot-20221119-075224.jpg

But yeah, this album isn't so much a return to folk as it is a dramatic expansion upon his pop adventures using the grammar of ensemble folk. While it is an improvement on 2020 it couldn't have been made without it

to me this one's an meditative and extensive expansion of peasant - very organically incorporating some of the sounds of 2020 and the hen ogledd albums into his folk. a sort of culmination

still have no real idea what the lyrics on this one are about for the most part (except "museum" is pretty obvious) and there aren't great transcriptions out there yet

there seems to be a lot about virtual reality and simulated existence, synthesised with a sort of primeval external life (and occasionally overlapping) - some heady retrofuturistic brew, utterly brilliant obv

The Fool may be the single most beautiful thing he’s ever written, weeping over here

I got to see a screening of The Hermit last week. Loved it.

On first listens I instinctively agree this album is better than 2020. I've not digested it at all lyrically and am looking forward to getting to know it better.

Just stumbled on a note that Drag City is reissuing the first two Hen Ogledd albums early next year.

Okay, just finished my first listen to "The Hermit", taking a break for a bit, but you guys are telling me the rest of the album is even better?

arguably

I mean, if it even just matches the quality of "The Hermit", it'll still likely be one of my favorite albums of the year.

great album. i love this guy but haven't done a great job of keeping up with all his various releases

This really is great, impressed that it maintained that level of quality throughout. I wouldn't mind more work with Circle too, seems like that might have been more than just a one off. But just happy to have this new one for right now.

Great Aquarium Drunkard interview with him.

his account is protected so i won't bother to link the tweet, but David Flipping Sylvian has just written:

richard dawson will be, if he's not already, a national treasure. with occasional hints of wyatt, there's no one else writing anything like him. this album, less strident than others, is quite breathtaking.

does anyone want a single ticket for the show this thursday 3/30 at union pool in brooklyn? i bought one not realizing i already had tickets for sunset rubdown at the bowery ballroom happening at the same time and so i've had to make a choice.

anyway i guess preference will go to whoever responds soonest who is interested? the ticket is in the DICE app

man I would love to see him, especially on one of these shows he's playing with Pigs x7 (what a combo!), but it's a pretty small tour.

great show tonight. charmingly digressive between songs. hadn't realized this is his first visit to North America.

still giving a ticket away for thursday in brooklyn if anybody is interested which is painful for me but i've committed to the other show damn me!

I've got a ticket, but have a friend who would love to go, if you still have.

If there's anyone on here who's been listening to and thinking about The Ruby Cord all year long, as I have, I'm putting together a small "roundtable" thing that'll mostly be focused on the lyrics. The words on the album are so beautiful, the stories so good, but I've seen hardly any discussion or analysis of actual details of the lyrics -- and what I *have* seen is usually remarkably different from how I understand things myself. I've read about four or five summaries of The Tip of an Arrow and each one has a different take on the ending. I started thinking that it might be fun to gather some Ruby Cord diehards together and use a messaging app to really go in-depth about things. (And at the end I would shape the talks slightly into some kind of "Ruby Cord Roundtable: song by song" series and post it on a tiny, effectively no-readership music site of mine, just so that it doesn't all completely vanish into the aether.) If this sounds like the kind of thing you'd enjoy, send a message!

And another (sort of) Circle collaboration is one the way! Jussi and Tomi from Circle have released two albums as Mahti, where they've teamed up with Hannu Saha, a traditional Finnish folk musician. Both albums are beautiful and well worth checking out, gorgeous cover art too.

Anyway, a third Mahti record is coming soon and they've added Richard to the group, as well as Sally Pilkington.

https://mahtifinland.bandcamp.com/album/musiikki-1

Phenomenal news! Even if the two are joining more as "Bulbils" than as "Dawson & Pilkington, songwriters of Hen Ogledd," that's still one hell of an addition. Obviously. Bulbils rule the world.

I failed to take that Roundtable very far (though thanx for playing along, imago), but closing on two years since release, The Ruby Cord remains one of my top ten albums ever.

The three new songs he's played live remind me of 2020, which I didn't love, so I'm keeping my expectations low. For me, his work work veers between "holy shit what the hell" (The Glass Trunk, Nothing Important, Henki, Free Humans, The Ruby Cord, and everything Bulbils... okay, that's a clear majority when I actually list it) and "cool in theory but I don't actually enjoy listening" (Peasant, Mogic, 2020).

Still one of the most interesting artists I'm aware of.

2020 ended up growing on me quite a bit! But its lesser tracks really came to life live I thought

For the record, if that'd have been a more general-purpose RD server it might have gone a bit further...ah well! Maybe there's one out there...

new rich(?) dawson day. end of the middle out in feb.

New single easily the lamest thing he's ever put out, but honestly, where do you go after The Ruby Cord

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mraMN1lILXY

yeah this isn't compelling at all sadly. press release has nothing to make me optimistic either, alas

cute video tho

Woah. Bulbils have a lot... any recommendations where to start?

Dive right in with the first record, Squatch. (But I say that being only seven or eight in myself. They're too wonderful to rush through.)

Or if you want an overview, you could try their self-curated four-hour set: here

New single easily the lamest thing he's ever put out, but honestly, where do you go after The Ruby Cord

Triple-album continuous-narrative space opera, of course!

Clearly I'm more excited than I was expecting. And having given it a first listen, remain intrigued and hopeful. This Polytunnel sounds way more melancholy than the live versions. Has more space too. Feels like it's got some of the loneliness of the hills from the Hermit video in it.

sure not so ambitious, but i love this. deepening delivery of 'polytunnel' especially.

After a few more listens, I love Polytunnel. Great prog folk. And touching as hell.

Not feeling Boxing Day Sales but willing to keep trying when the album's out.

Great talk with Richard here: https://pod.link/1081000090/episode/c40df76cffba228a3b726a9148db7b69

Third single Gondola is pretty good. Great video. And the reviews and new interview that have popped up over the last couple of days are sounding renticing. And Polytunnel has cemented itself as a huge fave. So, I finally made up my mind and pre-ordered, two days before the release date. Would love to join the Bandcamp Listening Party but that's 3AM in China.

*enticing

Woke up for the 3 AM listening party regardless. It's like a zombie version of 2020. An eviscerated 2020, its innards laid out on the table beside it. Which I mean as a compliment.

It's a lot less tame than the singles and album blurb had led me to expect. Got chills quite a few times. All three of the singles are more powerful in sequence.

Lyrically it's very 2020 too, but you keep getting moments where a black hole opens up, or things suddenly get mystical -- disorienting and disturbing moments that reminded me of the "while the faces of my loved ones disappear" turn in Nothing Important, or the dream about the minotaur in Fresher's Ball.

Three seven-minute songs, so it's not all miniatures either. The opener is short but massive -- just the way to answer The Hermit.

Looking forward to this.

A nap and few hours later, I'm really anxious for this to get published on Bandcamp. Can't wait to hear it again.