Blackgrass Harvest by Wychwood
Blackgrass Harvest is an album of mostly dark, mostly traditional folk songs played mostly acoustically – but that blends in some black metal, ambient, shoegaze, drone, noise music, audio collage, and other sonic experiments. It was recorded in Tim's bedroom between the 2nd and 7th wave of the pandemic (2020-2), with occasional bits recycled from earlier material.
The seed for this album was starting to experiment with home recording at the height of pandemic isolation. This seed germinated successfully, then sprouted into an attempt to realize the original idea for blackgrass (black metal + bluegrass). Could acoustic recordings of traditional folksongs work with distortion? This sprout leafed out into trying a different instrument and method of making distortion for each song. As a whole world of pedals and FX opened up, unplanned ambient and psychedelic blossoms started to appear – different ones for each song and instrument also.
This album, then, presents the results of these experiments and this growth – our blackgrass harvest.
Tracklist
Credits
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Tim sang and played banjo, guitar, bass, piano, mandolin, bass drum & foot jingle, and ukulele.
Chrissy sang and played guitar, saw, dobro, tin whistle, brushes & washboard, and glockenspiel.
Evelyne sang on "Bury me beneath the willow" and played cello on "Blackest Crow."
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No electric instruments, synths, sample packs, or software simulations were used in these recordings, though some of the acoustic instruments were run through effects and processors. The whole album was recorded with one mic and mixed on free software – so go make something better!
Tim did much of the twisting of knobs and clicking and tapping on effects pedals, a cassette player, cellular telephone, digital recorder, and personal computer, with notable exceptions and key contributions from Chrissy.
All the songs are traditional folksongs, part of neglected musical commons. (Go make your own versions!) The one exception is that Florence Reece wrote "Which Side Are You On?" in 1931 to the tune of traditional song "Jackie Munro."
For fair-use sound snippets and/or inspiration, thanks to Poppy, Norma Watterson, Florence Reece, Red-Tail Ring, the Carter Family, Sophie Lewis & Final Straw Radio, Anna Roberts-Gevalt & her porch friends, Muddy Waters & Alan Lomax, Negativland & The Tape-beatles & Sonic Outlaws, Kristin Hayter/Lingua Ignota, Harlan County USA, The Bronswik Affair, They Live, Bill Watterson/Calvin & Hobbes, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, The Dead Don't Die & Jim Jarmusch, Acolytes of Horror, Braid, The King of Comedy, The Innocents, Serial Experiments Lain, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Kiddy Kurdt Kobain, In the Mouth of Madness, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Pet Semetary, American Beauty, Prince of Darkness, High Fidelity, Buffalo 66, Them!, The Earth Dies Screaming, Repulsion, Derek goddamn Jensen, Stephen fucking Lett, Kristian Vikernes, and forgotten others. (No thanks or respect to any corporations that pretend to own any of this art and media)
Thanks for listening, and thanks to anyone who's cared along the way.
We're hoping to make physical versions of this album in time and if there's demand – if you're interested, or just want to say 'hi,' shoot us a message at info@wychwood.xyz
License
CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.Tags
We identify only half-jokingly as “the world’s first blackgrass band.” We play old murder-ballads and other spooky traditional folk songs, with some bright and sentimental spots thrown in for contrast. Some days we’re acoustic purists. Some days we like to corrupt traditional folksongs with bits of black metal, ambient, and noise music. We’re trying to make folk music dangerous again.