06 December 2024

BLAKE HORNSBY – A Village of Many Springs (2024 Cassette Monadnock Sound & Vision)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Monadnock Sound & Vision

Format: Cassette, Album, Limited Edition (Lovingly home-dubbed in real time)

Release Date: 10 Oct 2024

Blake Hornsby – a musician who lives in the Appalachian countryside and experiences Folk music dealing more with the Avant Experimental Psychedelic side of the American Primitive Guitar establishment – has a new album out, a Cassette only release called “A Village Of Many Springs”. Blake plays/uses a bunch of instruments (Guitar, Harmonium, Tamboura, Swarmandal, Bowed Guitar, Bowed Banjo, Bells, Singing Bowls, Shaker, Slide Whistle, Flexatone, Wooden Flute, Conch Shell) and he is also responsible for the Spoken Words, Laughter, Water, Breath, and Night Sky with the help of Sam Fanthorpe (Electric Violins, Spoken Word), Jonathon Sale (Tabla, Bells, Whistling, Spoken Word), and Gaia Lawing (Shruti Box). Blake wrote a few notes that I find quite informative about the songs of the album, so let’s have a look:

“Watauga (wuh-TAW-guh) is a Cherokee word that is said to translate to ‘Whispering Waters’ or ‘A Village of Many Springs’. It is also the name of a county in Western North Carolina where I lived from 2014-2022.

All of the tunes on this album not only reference Watauga and the surrounding areas, but also water. Appalachia is a place with an abundance of water.

Watauga and the surrounding counties have a very special place in my heart. This album is an ode to Watauga: A Village of Many Springs.

“Whispering Waters”: The title of this tune refers to one of the translations of Watauga. I wrote it while I was living on Laurel Creek Road. It’s a mixture of blues and free form guitar with an eastern flair.

“Laurel Creek Blues”: Named after the creek and the road I once lived on, this piece went through a lot of evolutions. I had the title before the actual tune. It’s what I would call a happy blues.

“Cathedral Falls”: The title of this comes from the local name of a waterfall in the Linville Gorge Wilderness. It blends Turkish folk, Arabic music, blues, and a touch of Indian influence, mixed with free jazz inspired acoustic cacophony.

“O How the Water Flows North”: I composed this piece in the midst of recording the album. It is dedicated to the New River, one of the oldest rivers in the world. It flows north.

“Bury My Soul in the Linville River”: This is based on a raga called Yaman which is an evening/nighttime raga, meaning it should be played and listened to at the later part of the day. Some gharanas (schools of Indian music) are more strict about this than others. I only perform this song at night and it was recorded at night.

I cannot take complete credit for this one although it is mostly improvised. I transcribed fixed compositions that are sometimes played in raag Yaman from a book of ragas. I would not go as far as to call this a raga because I have done minimal formal training in the Hindustani (North Indian Classical Music) genre. I tried my best to nail down some of the rules associated with this raga.

The name of the tala (rhythmic cycle) played by Jonathon Sale on tabla is called Pancham Sawari.

Sam Fanthorpe plays the electric violin which was recorded twice and Gaia Lawing plays the shruti box, which is a drone that uses bellows to produce sound. I play guitar, tamboura, and other instruments”…

Side ‘A’ of “A Village Of Many Springs” contains 4 tracks while side ‘B’, just 1. On the opener “Whispering Waters”, Blake with his acoustic guitar pays tribute to the Blues-Folk scene of the old days, there’s an alt-country feel that sometimes reaches the “Raga” sound-boarders… “Laurel Creek Blues” is a Blues-Country track that (at least to my ears) sounds like a finger-tipping guitar practice… “Cathedral Falls” is a highly improvised track using the same acoustic guitar soundscape, it’s quite experimental and bluesy (of course) with dark Folk and Country pinches… There’s a dangerous flirt with Drone music on “O How The Water Flows North” under a Bluesy and experimental background… Side ‘B’ is occupied by the sidelong “Bury My Soul in the Linville River”, a long Raga-ish track (23:28min), deeply improvisational (of course), super experimental (of course, again), blending in Blake’s unique acoustic guitar style many “genres” (or “kinds of music” if you prefer), there are passages from Drone Music, from Blues, Folk, Country, from Raga music, and even some great free-form Avant Garde bucolic experimental Psych (or whatever is this!). This is a very very difficult track to listen to unless you are a bit initiated, but one way or another, I strongly recommend this album, you know, there are no “barriers” here, let the music touch your inner soul… TimeLord Michalis