Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew - MAY

Newly established Pennsylvania label Love's Devotee makes its second contribution with this double disc collection of recordings made by Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew between 2020-2023 and originally released digitally by Drew as part of a much wider series of explorations into British folk song. This is folk in its most progressive of formations, made recognisable by Churchman's sing-song melodicism but otherwise rendered in more abstracted formations of droning electronics, ghostbox magick, a slo-mo kraut trudge, and trance-like ambience. Something is probably wrong here, but why is everyone still smiling like that? Images of Midsummer and the Order of O.T.O might come to mind, but I'd suggest this is not so much cult as the England you find hidden between the lines, wound from the received wisdoms and horrors of the countryside, where there are different rules at play and invariably ancient lore written in song to document them. It's the kind of influence found deeply embedded in the music of a huge range of quintessentially British music, be that Comus, Psychic TV's Dreams Less Sweet, Current 93 and, I think most notably here, Broadcast. And on a wider level, MAY speaks to that renewed interest in pre-modern song that's gripping underground music across Europe (Luster, Annelies Monsere, Blod et al), utilising old means to look forwards, the past re-animated inside the present. And forwards Churchman and Drew do invariably move, albeit in a ghostly march that goes around the maypole a few times beforehand. Edition of 350.