Birdloom, by Birdloom

Birdloom

by Birdloom

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sophie my favorite track has changed about three times, but nellie the milkmaid is really just such a bop. this album is gorgeous. the production is precise and intentional; krauss' voice is achingly beautiful, and the combination of those things makes for something really magical. glad this one is finally seeing the light of day. Favorite track: Nellie the Milkmaid.

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Full Digital Discography

26

releases

Get all 26 Sharron Kraus releases available on Bandcamp and save 40%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Birdloom, K I N, Swift Wings, Welcome to Punkie Night, Friends and Enemies; Lovers and Strangers - second pressing, Joy's Reflection is Sorrow, Time Takes Away, If You Put Out Your Hand, and 18 more. , and , .

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1.	Nellie the Milkmaid 03:45	buy track
2.	One Night As I Lay On My Bed 04:01	buy track
3.	The Bloody Gardener 04:40	buy track
4.	The Cuckoo 03:20	buy track
5.	Lovely Joan 03:16	buy track
6.	Rosemary Lane 03:13	buy track
7.	Bold Lamkin 07:25	buy track
8.	Brown Robin 04:11	buy track
9.	Come Write Me Down 03:54	buy track

about

THE STORY OF BIRDLOOM

In April 2002 electronic musician David Muddyman (aka Muud, Jamuud), whose main recording project was Loop Guru, posted the following advert to an email list I was subscribed to:
"Female singer, in the vain (sic) of Sandy Denny, Celia Humphris, or even Yma Sumac, wanted to pull English traditional folk music into the 21st Century. If you think a backing of Mongolian Drones, Screaming 60s organs and Transcengenic rhythms sounds appalling, please don't reply. What I want is a singer with heart and passion and a sense of adventure. Preferably based in London or the South East. Initially this is a recording project only."

I was certainly not appalled and replied expressing interest in the project. Dave and I started corresponding and quickly found common ground: a shared love of and respect for traditional music, coupled with an eclecticism and experimental approach. At that stage Dave told me that he wasn't what he considered to be a real musician, saying “My instruments are my computer, my samplers and lots of pieces of tape. Having said that I have always strived to make sounds and music that is organic. I suppose I am more of a sound sculptor really, who understands the conventions of music and uses them. I am obsessed by rhythms and drones. I love working with real singers and musicians because they give needed life and vitality, sometimes difficult to create entirely on a computer.” I was a more conventional though largely self-taught musician, and had just released my first album, Beautiful Twisted, which was a collection of songs I'd written on guitar and banjo, taking melodic cues from traditional songs and tunes.

We emailed ideas back and forth, and talked on the phone (landline). We shared our musical projects with each other, sending CDs by post in the days before Dropbox and WeTransfer. We then started thinking about songs to record. We were both big fans of Shirley Collins and Martin Carthy, so drew on their repertoires. Dave had just ordered the 20 CD Voice of the People anthology from Topic Records, so that gave us a lot to wade through and I'd been digging around in books for lesser known traditional songs to sing at my local folk session. Most of the songs we ended up working with were ones we took from Shirley Collins and Martin Carthy, one exception being the Child Ballad 'Brown Robin' with its story of love, deception and cross-dressing involving a king's daughter and her lover, which we were keen to include. We could find neither a recorded version of that song nor a tune associated with the words, so I wrote a tune for it and we recorded it.

Our recording process for each song involved Dave building up layers of sound that I would then sing and add the occasional analogue instrument to. He would send me CDs of his work in progress and was sometimes anxious that I'd be shocked at how unorthodox his experiments were, so would email to let me know what he was sending so as to forewarn me. One such email read as follows: “'Polly on the Shore' hasn't turned out how I was possibly expecting it to. It now has more in common with Tom Waits around the time of Swordfish Trombone. I have also started a third, 'Sir Patrick Spens', which is sounding like a folk band given to Jamaican Dubmaster who made a record and then played it underwater.” I looked forward to the arrival of these CDs and to being thrilled by the sounds they contained. Here's my response to one: “Some of the work in progress is great on first listening - The Bloody Gardener is definitely getting creepier - gorgeous. I love the rhythmic sounds that come in on the second verse - they sound like either plants being ripped out of marshy ground or roots sucking up nutrients, or something. It really gives the impression that it's not just the gardener that's evil but that the whole garden is!”

We fed off each other's excitement about the way the songs were developing and hoped other people would also be enthusiastic about the project, which by then had been named 'Birdloom'. Dave played some tracks to his Loop Guru bandmate Sam Dodson and reported back that “Rosemary Lane is becoming totally addictive. I played it to Sam, who not a renowned folk love. He adored it.” I shared tracks with Oxford friends John Spiers and Jon Boden, who were just starting to make a splash in the traditional folk world. They also loved what they heard and wanted to get involved, so we scheduled in recording sessions with the two of them, adding John's melodeon and Jon's fiddle to a number of tracks.

Dave also ran the project by Ian Anderson, then editor of fRoots magazine, who invited us to be interviewed on Radio 3 for a programme called 'A Place Called England' on the future of English folk music. Two Birdloom tracks were featured on this programme and that's the only time any of them have seen the light of day.

At the time of that broadcast, we described the project as follows: “The idea behind Birdloom is to mix ancient with even more ancient and tradition with modern. To take traditional English folk songs and enhance their stories with cinematic tendencies. To breathe rhythmic life into the cobwebs and create a new twenty-first century folk music.” We had high hopes and sent out demos to a number of record labels. None of them wanted to release the music, though, so it got shelved. We both became busy with other projects and life moved on. Over the years Dave and I corresponded intermittently and after a 3 year gap I received a nice email from him catching me up with his latest news and saying “I still listen to the Birdloom music. It doesn’t date. I would still like to see it released sometime. I think it is worthy of that.”

Now, after even longer, and a year after Dave's death, I'm listening to the tracks we recorded and am flooded with good memories of a dear friend, a lively collaboration, and a time and place in our lives. I don't know that Dave's right that the tracks don't date – they do sound dated to me at this point in time, post Tuung, Imagined Village, Stick in the Wheel and other folktronica and experimental folk projects. But they still have a certain something..

Sharron Kraus
Oxford
2023

credits

released March 27, 2023

David Muddyman: sounds
Sharron Kraus: vocals, tin whistle, bamboo flute

with
Jon Boden: fiddle on 3, 7, 9
John Spiers: melodeon on 5, 8

Recorded by David Muddyman in 2002, 2003
Mastered by Dean Honer in 2023

Dedicated to the memory of David Muddyman, 1957 - 2022

** 50% of the proceeds from sales of this album will be donated to St Luke's Hospice Plymouth **

license

about

Sharron Kraus Oxford, UK

Musical collaborator / songwriter / improviser.
'Pagan radiophonica meets medieval balladry’
'sensual spellcraft’
'Floating freaky fun of the highest order'
'oddly comforting avant-garde masterpiece'
Labels: Sunstone, Ghost Box, Clay Pipe, Feeding Tube, Cardinal Fuzz, Second Language ... more

discography

Birdloom

Mar 2023
K I N

Oct 2022
Swift Wings

May 2022
Welcome to Punkie Night

Oct 2021
Intermission

May 2020
Friends and Enemies; Lovers and Strangers - second pressing

Aug 2019
Chanctonbury Rings

Jun 2019
Something Out of Nothing 7"

Sep 2018
Joy's Reflection is Sorrow

Jun 2018
Time Takes Away

Jul 2016
If You Put Out Your Hand

Apr 2016
Hen Llan Recordings

Feb 2016
Friends and Enemies; Lovers and Strangers

May 2015
Silver Servants

Jul 2014
Winter Songs / Caneuon y Gaeaf

Nov 2013
Music and Migration III

Sep 2013
Night Mare

Aug 2013
Pilgrim Chants & Pastoral Trails

Aug 2013
Yesterday Perhaps: Songs of the Kitchen Cynics

Jan 2013
Folk Songs II

Aug 2012
New Music for Old Instruments

Jan 2012
In the Rheidol Valley

Mar 2011
The Devil in Love: A Soundtrack to the 1772 Occult Novel

Jan 2011
The Woody Nightshade

Nov 2010
Rusalnaia Tour CD

Sep 2008
The Fox's Wedding

Mar 2008
Rusalnaia

Jan 2008
Travellers Two

Jan 2008
John Barleycorn Reborn

Aug 2007
Right Wantonly A-Mumming

Jun 2007
Singing At the Moon

Nov 2006
Leaves From Off the Tree

Oct 2006
Imaginational Anthems Volume 2

Jun 2006
The Black Dove

Mar 2006
The Honeymoon Music Compilation

May 2005
Songs for the Twins

Jan 2005
A Houseguest's Wish: Translations of Wire's Outdoor Miner

Nov 2004
Songs of Love and Loss

Mar 2004
Yuletide

Jan 2003
Beautiful Twisted

Mar 2002

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