The start of a new series of improvisations with guest artists for 2024. My first guest for the zodiac sign of Aries was Ailsa Mair. The audio video improvisation was created entirely live, combining a selection of Ailsa’s photos and video clips with astrological symbols, live cameras and sounds.
The session started with a bit of Ann Petrie on vinyl talking about the Aries nature, it combines with a loop of Holst’s Mars and Cor Meibion Aberystwyth before giving way to the cello and voice of Ailsa Mair.
We have been talking of making some work around the tarot and symbol of the fool in particular. Seems wholly appropriate to explore this in the time of Aries.
This year’s guest for Aries is Elsa Davies. This improvisation includes vinyl selected and played by Elsa with live visual treatments and semi modular synths.
This year’s cycle of zodiac themed performances will include bits of this amazing series of vinyl. I originally bought the Scorpio one based on the amazing trousers on the cover, when I found it was an album of muzak style covers selected for the sign and not spoken word, it was obvious I had to try and find the whole set. It has taken nearly 2 years to get them all, Pisces proving particularly tricky to get at reasonable cost. Discogs is the best.
This year’s circle in 12 parts features guest artists chosen by zodiac sign, my first guest for Aries is Rowan O’Neill:
“When first asked to take part in this project my immedate thought was to interrogate Jacob’s record databases looking for songs and music related to sheep or defaid. This resulted in a selection of records that juxtaposed ram and lamb; safe grazing or being rounded up and counting your blessings instead of sheep.
Jacob was also keen to include some kind of live intervention in the mix. I was not sure what this would be but as aries season got under way in March I began reading Allen Raine’s novel A Welsh Singer (1897). I have been looking at the work of Allen Raine as part of a mentored Research and Development Project with creative agency Addo. The novel charts the rise of the heroine from a poor orphan to local eistedddfod winner, then circus performer in London and finally an opera singer on the European stage. The first sentence of the novel references a March morning and a sheep that has fallen off a cliff to its death where it now lies at the bottom, ‘as dead as a red herring’.
My original idea for my Allen Raine project had been to base an opera on her later novel, Queen of the Rushes, set during the 1904 Welsh Revival. Though I had read the novel some years ago I had quite forgotten that the central character of this work is in fact, for most of the novel, mute. She does however eventually regain her speech and at this moment, overcome with emotion, she breathes a, ‘prayer of gratitude, in words that no longer died upon her tongue, but reached her ears in the music of the human voice.’
As a young girl I competed at an Eisteddfod in Aberporth performing a song called Y Ddafad Gorniog. The opening lyrics are etched in my memory but I do not completely recall the tune. I have sung the tune as I remember it with a simple piano accompaniment. Working it out I started singing Baa Baa Black Sheep too and recorded this with concertina which I began learning to play last year.
I worked with Jacob in 2020 on a music project working with young carers using an app called Loopy HD. For this aries mix I made a couple of vocal pieces with Loopy HD that riff on both the folk tunes/songs and the, ‘music of the human voice’. The twelve loops mirror perhaps the twelve parts of the zodiac circle and the loops of Jacob’s records. The horned ram’s head is a souvenir from the farm I grew up on, Rhos-y-Gadair Uchaf, at the end of a lane in Felinwynt.” https://www.rowanoneill.com/
Vinyl records used in the mix were Holst’s ‘Mars’ played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra & the L.A. Philharmonic, as well as reinterpretations by Tomita and by Kevin Peek on ‘Beyond the Planets’. Other records in the mix: Roger Christian – Discover yourself through Astrology; John Dankworth – The Zodiac Variations; Cosmos – Your Stars for 1968; Norrie Paramour Orchestra – The Zodiac Suite; Cannonball Adderley presents – Soul Zodiac; Cosmic Sounds – The Zodiac
Records chosen by Rowan: London Symphony Orchestra – Sheep May Safely Graze; Hogia Llandegai – Defaid William Morgan; Jac a Wil – Y Ddafad Golledig; Roy Buchanan – I’m a Ram; Stories of Larry the Lamb in Toytown; Bing Crosby – Count Your Blessings instead of Sheep;
Other contributions from Rowan included readings of text:
Allen Raine, Queen of the Rushes (1906), Chapter 8 ‘Maldraeth’ Allen Raine, A Welsh Singer (1897), Chapter 1, Abersethin Slopes
folk songs: Bah Bah Black Sheep Mae gen i ddafad gorniog
March was to be the start of a year long series of improvisations exploring parallels between creative and ritual practice, the symbolic power of the circle, the zodiac, repetition and magic. Working with musician friend Jay, we were planning a monthly live webcast performance from my studio, me playing records, Jay taking a feed from the desk, sampling and treating with Ableton and sending it back into the mix.
We have been talking about this for a while now and rehearsing since January.
It’s been a fantastic listening exercise, trying to find balance between the analogue and digital and working out ways of creating structure within the performances based on some fundamental astrological ideas i.e signs, houses, modes, elements and decans.
In choosing records, I was inspired to seek out spoken word astrology ones having found a copy of ‘Tetley take you Stargazing with Maurice Woodruff: Aries’, in the Ty Hafan charity shop in Cardigan some time ago. Thanks to Ebay and Discogs I almost have the whole zodiac by a number of different astrologers.
There are also a number of musical interpetations of the zodiac signs and several copies of Holst’s planets.
Mixing in with those are a few tracks refering to magic in different ways. So far the only one thats made it into the mix has been A Kind of Magic by Queen, I have a few others in mind which will no doubt make later mixes.
Given the current Covid-19 restrictions we are unable to start the project as planned and im still not quite sure what this will mean for it. While we are finding a few extracts from our Aries rehearsals to post soon and work out how to proceed, I am posting this video of a vinyl only mix to be going on with.
The overlay is a sketch created in After Effects exploring wrapping a few circular images around a sphere. The images are photos of my mother’s crystal ball in the sunset light from the studio window and a version of my birthchart drawn by my mother back in 1996.
The found of music 