The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Sunday morning... must be time for some contemporary Danish folk music. Luckily I recently got hold of a copy of Analogik's 2008 album "Søens Folk".

For those that aren't familiar with Analogik they play traditional music (particularly Balkan) with an electronic twist and clear hip-hop influences. It's generally the sort of music you should really do a Cossack break dance to.

Hard to get bored here, each track is radically different from the next and highly eccentric.

The album starts off sounding fairly traditional with Russisk Vuggevise (Russian Lullaby according to Google Translate), with minimal electronics, but complete with all the necessary "Hey Hey"s. They then launch the electronics at you in force in God Russisk (Good Russian) with it's wonderful oom-pa baseline, before slowing it down with Forbudt Sprut (Forbidden Booze) where the hip-hop influences start to really come to the fore giving a sound something like you might expect if you crossed the old style ballroom with the kia-ora advert. So it goes on for track after track, with each sounding almost like an entirely different band.

Other highlights include Ond Mand March (Evil Man March) which sounds exactly like the name implies, Godmorgen (Good morning) which capture that mechanic "I'm not really awake yet feeling" with added breakfast sound effects and Farligt Monster (Dangerous Monster) which for a few moments at the beginning sounds like it's going to launch into the theme from the littlest hobo, but then you're suddenly rescued by the other instruments and it starts to morphs into a blend of traditional folk and record scratching.

The whole album is available on bandcamp, but here's a couple of samples:

God Russik -

(Direct link)

Farligt Monster -

(Direct link)

Gogs are off to Oxford on Saturday, dancing in the city centre during the day, as follows:

2pm - Bonn Square
2.45pm - Cornmarket followed by tea & cake break
3.15pm - Broad Street

...or something vaguely along those lines.

We head over to Kennington in the evening for the Oxfolk ceilidh with What's Up Folk and Fee Lock, where we will be performing in the interval.

Gogs are dancing out in the villages around Ely on Saturday as part of Ouse Washes' Day of Dance (lots and lots of molly)

We're going to be at

11.00 - The Cutter, Ely
12.00 - off to The Plough, Little Downham
1.15 - down the road to The Anchor, Little Downham
2.30 - off to Five Miles, Upware where we dance until about 4.30.

Whittlesey was fun with Tyler's yesterday. It was pretty much exactly the same levels of chaos as at the clock's tour in the autumn, but at a festival.

Luckily the council had conspired to make the festival just as chaotic by forgetting to shut the road.

It's just a shame the festival seems to have lost some of the magic it used to have when I first went, but then the whole atmosphere of the place has changed. Every other shop's now closed making it feel strangely skeletal.

The first time I visited the place would have been for my first dance out with Gogs in 2003 for St George's day, where we danced outside the George pub in the market square with a few other sides. Admittedly, every time I visited that pub, it was crap, but it was also the main focus of the market square and it's now been standing there boarded up for a few years. One of many desserted buildings in what should be one of the main focal points of the village. It's turned from a quaint village market square to utterly miserable desolation. Surely someone must be able to do something with those buildings, even if they're just turned into flats or something?

The festival itself also seems to be getting a bit too big for it's boots too, which is unfortunate. Rather than being this friendly little village festival, it seems to have become full of it's own self-importance. A number of people have mentioned to me about sides that have been banned from Whittlesey. What's all that about then? There was even one point during the day, where Red Leceister processed out of town saying they'd just been banned. No idea what they'd done.

All in all, it's still a good festival and it was fun to go there with Tylers', but it just seems the festival needs to just take itself a little less seriously again.

Highlights: (Tyler's are around 1 min in just after Gogs)

(Direct link)

(via Peel Productions)

Haven't done one of these for a while, as the pile of cds is threatening to bury me alive probably should.

The next album in the pile is Warblefly's latest: Tenerife to Dover, which I bought after they stalked me through all the summer festivals. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but they were performing at Broadstairs and Wallingford. It's also not a bad album (to follow the exaggeration with an understatement).

Contemporary folk rock at it's finest, Warblefly sound like what might have resulted if the Pogues had decided to try their hand at the indie rock of the 90s/00s and by some miracle had managed to pull it off. This is an album which would happily sit on the shelf beside both contemporary folk and mainstream indie-rock.

Quite often when buying studio albums of bands seen live, the albums never seem to capture the energy of the live performance. Warblefly seem to be an exception to this rule however, with just as much power in their recording. Then again there are millions of them playing (well 8) and they do work together really well. They manage to get all the raw guitar power of some of the best modern rock band without overpowering the traditional instruments. The whole sound sits together without anyone of the players stealing all the limelight. Track after track they just launch themselves upon you as a whole, there's not a single weak song on the album.

There may be a strong influence of the Pogues which comes across in the album, but this blends with many other influences from far and wide. "Shoplifter" may be the only folk-rock-ska anthem I've ever heard, but it's certainly worthy of the title of the finest, and if you've never heard a Zappa influenced folk-rock instrumental "Axle Strumpet" is highly recommended.

The real highlights of the album are Sack of Seeds, which echos the epic songs of the likes of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, but with a contemporary edge; Shrimp Boy, which is like being sliced to pieces by fiddles and Underwater Breathing Competition, a morbid glam-slipjig with attitude.

At which point, I've probably enthused about them enough, so I'll just share a link to Underwater Breathing Competition on last.fm and mention the the rest of the album's on there too.

Time to swomp you all with dance posts again.

Firstly Thrales are dancing out in KilburnBrixton on Friday, following a route similar to the following

• 8pm - The Prince
• 8.20pm - Rest is Noise (tbc)
• The Ritzy Cinema Bar (tbc)
• 8.40pm - Prince Albert (tbc)
• 9.00pm - Dogstar
• 9.20pm - Effra
• 9.45pm - Hootananny (tbc)
• 10.00pm - Mango Landin' (tbc)
• 10.30pm - White Horse (tbc)

Just heard that Bellowhead will be playing New Year's Eve at the Royal Festival Hall. That would be the most amazing NYE ever. Unfortunately, it appears it's £50 a ticket :'-(

Suspect, Bursledon Village Band Ceilidh at C# would be a fun alternative though :-)

As if last weekend was not enough. Thrales are out again on Friday. This time on the Isle of Dogs.

We're meeting at the Henry Addington, MacKenzie Walk at 7.30 for an 8pm start. Then going on to:

City Pride, Westferry Road
The Rogue Trader, Westferry Road
The Fine Line, Fishermans Walk
1802 Museum of Docklands

...and whereever else we can find

Also on facebook, although there's not any more detail there.

There's something really special about opening up LJ friend's list and finding this as the first post. Yey, Fame! (OK, I wasn't part of them 40 years ago due to non-existence, but Yay anyway).

I just love this quote though:

Long haired Morris dancing crew (Blackheath Foot & Death Men) in intensive training for Summer Festivals and Civil Insurrection narrowly escaped arrest after ejection from Woolwich Indian Restaurant due to the role of a meat cleaver in the performance of their traditional English dance

I can just see that happening.

Nearly 40 years later, we are still going strong and can be seen dancing out in Greenwich today, although probably without the meat cleaver. Details here.

As we've now just about reached the end of the world morris season, tomorrow Blackheath are having their end of season tour in Greenwich

We'll be dancing at the following (with approximate times):

12.00 - Ashburnham Arms, Ashburnham Grove
1.30 - Morden Arms, Brand Street
2.30 - Richard 1, Royal Hill
4.00 - Back to the Ash