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

oh yeah this is real lovely, thanks for shouting it out

I must have listened to it at least 15 times since lj tipped me off y'day in teh slack. It's sermon for our elegiac times, an intimate, pastoral masterpiece.

Sonically the piece evolves into what sounds like the coda of A Silver Mount Zion's '13 Angels Standing Guard 'round the Side of Your Bed', a soft murmury wailing from the after life, mantra wise. To me it sounds crazy hopeful.

particularly after Dawson put the finishing touches on an album he’s been working on with brilliant Finnish metal outfit Circle

lol just came here to post that

https://thequietus.com/articles/28221-richard-dawson-sally-pilkington-bulbils-interview

also of note imo

http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/28221/20200405_181053_001_1588782312_crop_550x412.jpg

otm

Bless 'em. Their corpulent output has been too vast to digest in full, but a number of the Bulbis releases really hit the spot. Most notably, ty LJ, 'The Easter Bunny', a hymn for our times and then some.

Mole (off album 3), The Easter Bunny (15) and The Princess And The Frog (25) are the three standouts so far imo

The element with Circle doesn’t feel so sad because I think we’ll get to it and it’ll be even better for it, so that’ll be good, but yeah, we didn’t get to play with Hannah Diamond.

need that dawson/diamond link up at some point

More standouts:

Cherries (35)

and now Genie In A Bottle (40, just released) is sounding amazing too

We're at #45 today, 'Darling', and it's aquatic ambient bliss. Cannot respect him and his wife enough for this extremely vast output. And it's free, people! Though he'd prefer it if you donate to Black Lives Matter, as per his Bandcamp.

The project is already of an intimidating size, I realise this, but more people need to hear the greatness of this massive project he's quitely building.

I was wondering if this was still going!

new album of odds n ends and some lockdown recordings

https://richardmichaeldawson.bandcamp.com/

o nice, will listen soon

very lovely, shorter instrumental pieces really hit the spot in this heat. the fifteen minute track feels like it could have gone on nothing important

i mean that would put it in the upper thousandth percentile of songs by anyone ever so

this is wonderful. is it just me or has his singing improved somewhat? I guess recording an EP a day or whatever could do that.

awwww his little Newcastle United anthem is so dear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL75N1NMIdg

the first single 'Trouble' was a total earworm too, think this will be better than the first one

lol the track sandwiched between the two singles on the album is actually titled 'Earworm', aiming high

2020 truly is the year of incredibly long albums huh

j/k I'm stoked for this

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/25/songs-about-sewage-and-space-travel-its-prog-folk-band-hen-ogledd

the new Hen Ogledd album is an absolute delight!!!!!

I'm enjoying the new one too. The last one was ok - a bit frontloaded qualitywise.

It's fine. Some nice moments. Far too much Bothwell, who's quite annoying (although Trouble is good)

I wonder when he's going to release the album with Circle.

It’s way too twee for me. Dawson lockdown bandcamp daily is where it’s at.

https://www.nts.live/shows/richard-dawson

new collaborative album with finnish experimental band circle out november 26, titled henki. it's apparently a "hypno-folk-metal" concept album about "special plants throughout history"

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

lead single "lily" is less awkward than a lot of the last album but doesn't really do much for me

i quite like it, but the artwork is stunning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nly2TwK4tio

oh i like this much more

What do we think

I vacillate between 'good' and 'could have been better' on my first listen

Closing track tho

I hope to buy this locally later.

solid, covering similarish ground to the last album but much improved

I had been observing him from afar and I can say this works well for me as an introduction. The krautrock is unobtrusive and gives a solid foundation for his chanting and falsetto, I like how expansive this is, good collaboration. I was listening to late career Robert Wyatt and also early Genesis the other day and this is totally in line, thanks to the piano touches and the songwriting in different parts / playing with different voice levels. Methuselah and Lily especially could be on Nursery Cryme or Selling England. Sounds great as a revival, if it was the intention.

Add Pitcher

Maybe it’s just fated that this would be my favourite thing Dawson has done - just to frustrate and perplex imago.

It really is great though.

Hey I still really do like it! It feels to me like there's not quite enough Circle until Pitcher, but the flipside of that is plenty of Dawson

https://thequietus.com/articles/30858-circle-richard-dawson-interview

interview suggests the collaboration is likely to be continuing beyond this, with circle calling dawson their new lead singer & everything, they seem extremely enthusiastic about it all

having circle as his backing band makes him going rock & really indulging his prog tendencies work so much better than on 2020, they're a really good fit. i'm revisiting 2020 and it still doesn't really move me - the songs are fine but the arrangements are so clunky

That's cool! Very exciting and I'm certain it will produce brilliant music. Great interview and write-up too

I sort of agree that this album's instrumentation suits his rock/prog choices better overall, although 2020 got the songwriting absolutely spot on at times - and hey, Black Triangle did the heavy rock thing superbly!

love this
ivy is a banger

Still haven't heard this, my copy apparently won't arrive for another few weeks, but love the positive reception so far. Coming from this as a Circle fan might be interesting, I've only checked out a few Dawson songs in the past (fine, but he never fully clicked for me). I'm happy about whatever brings Circle back out of (relative) slumber and gets them excited again.

the one downside of dawson going full prog rock with circle is that it's not quite as distinct and singular as his previous work, and so something is lost there (i certainly still prefer peasant), but the results here are still very very good

Nothing Important and Peasant both sui generis masterpieces ofc yes and both in my top 3 albums of the previous decade, but losing that guitar was like losing a limb - he has adapted really well, but...at least we got what we did get

yeah absolutely

there's still a little of the guitar but it's a shame there's not more

i mean the specific guitar he made those two albums on. someone literally broke it beyond repair while he was touring Peasant and he took it as a cosmic sign and pivoted

Isn't there a little bit of myth-making here with this unique guitar story.

I wouldn't say so. I've heard it from his own mouth that the strange sounds he got out of it inspired his playing style, and that style has been notable for its absence ever since