There are now ten new songs in the pipeline being worked up by Jim, Ken, Sam and Simon. But are they Acid Folk? Perhaps Psychedelic Folk or Folk Rock……. Christian Contemporary……. a bit Wyrd….. New Indie Mondiale Scottish….. one eavesdropper has already bigged them up as ‘a bit seventies-ish…….’ we’re asking you to send comment……..
The four Caedmon men have travelled from Manchester and Edinburgh three times to write and record together and a number of the demo tracks recorded at the Nook in County Durham will soon be available to listen to on this website. A trip to the Midlands captured Angela’s voice at a fourth session. Tracks now on www.myspace.com/caedmonsreturn include:
‘Childless’
‘Ougadougou’
‘Onna Kae’
‘Still Here’
Ken’s currently based in France but travelled for the fifth and latest session in Edinburgh in May, when the band started to rehearse a live set ready for appearances in 2010.
It’s the same musician line-up as in the 70’s, but the instrumentation now includes drum kit, djembe, accordion, mbira, trombone, and ukulele as well as the original Fender Strat, electric bass (through the same old Ampeg combo), mandolin, and ‘cello.
But does it need fuller fuzz, phaster phlange, spaced-out moments of contemplative improvisation? Let us know and
watch this space………..
Well to be fair, it isn’t the original Fender Strat which I sold in 1978 for £180, but it is original and it does look and sound like a Fender Strat. If you’re that way inclined, you can read about the James Bisset 50th Anniversary Strat here.
Hello. I have been a big Caedmon fan for many years and came upon you as I collected Psyche-folk music and many, many offshoots. Ken and I exchanged several emails through myspace over the years as I’ve encouraged you guys to play again. I am really happy that you are both recording and playing live shows. This is really exciting and I hope to attend a show next year (ps–I also have enjoyed Comus’ reunion and I actually work for them on their USA operation, such as it is–one tour that had to be cancelled but hopefully will happen next year. And to a lesser degree, I’ve been supportive of Spirogyra founder Martin Cockerham’s recent efforts).
Anyway, your band is quite tricky to classify. If I focus on the seventies material, I think Aslan is one of the classic psyche-folk songs, but you have other psyche-folk, folk-rock, pastoral folk songs and I don’t know how you dreamed up Columbas’ Song, but that is pretty unclassifiable.
In general, I prefer Psyche-folk to be a broad umbrella of psychedelic sounding folk and even straighter folk that is of the psychedelic era (although not the really hard traditionalists of course). Hopefully, I can meet some of you some time and we can have a long chat about this (and comparing you to some of the thousands of records from this era that I’ve collected).
I like your new material and am happy to hear a good variety of sounds from the rhythmic songs to the psyche-folk vibe of Childless. It’s a good idea to stay fairly true to your original style when a band reforms after a long break, but again, your album gives you plenty of room to do whatever you feel works for you. Let the record collectors worry about the labelling as you point out elsewhere (Acid folk is one of the most overused words because it sells mediocre folk records from the late 60s).
Nice to hear Angela’s unique voice again, too.
Good luck, stay strong and healthy and hopefully I will be meeting you all next year!
–Dave
Thanks for your comments David.
You’ve sussed that you can hear the four tracks currently on Caedmon’s myspace page. Jim’s also working upon making them play on this site, but he’s a busy man.
Best regards…….. yes let the collectors do the classifying….we’ll just get on an write……. perhaps it’s not surprising that we’ve found we’ve got lots to write about… family and the passage of time, our place in a big world and dealing with the fact that we never seem to grow up…..
Ah yes, that’s what I was going to do…
Hi David
Thanks for coming….. it was great to meet you.
We’ll keep you informed about the new album.