Originally intended as a compilation from other works The Proximal Indo-European No-Age Sounds of Sedayne has over the past few years developed an identity all of its own featuring as it does a diversity of items which aren't presently available elsewhere such as an impassioned Venereum Arvum take on Veris Dulcis In Tempore from the 13th century Codex Buranus (Carmina Burana MS) delivered in the Orthodoxy of Medieval Music as pioneered by the likes of The Clemencic Consort, Atrium Musicae de Madrid & Hesperion XX but, alas, long forgotten in this age of simpering Post-Modernism - even the singular contributions made by Martin Best are acknowledged as Sedayne delivers his own translation of the erotic Latin lyric by way of a sweeter clarification; joyous to cavort therefore & damn near authentic too, at least as far as the instrumentation of crwth, koboz, Medieval harp, drum, flutes & bells is concerned but remember:- in the Proximal Indo-European No-Age Sound Word of Sedayne the concept of authenticity is complete anathema - the word belongs with Model Railway Enthusiasts who, to give them their due, would at least recognise a real train if they saw one.... (For a more straightforward version of this piece see theVenereum Arvum cdr assembled for their autumn concerts in 2002)

Also included in this selection are the The Hale-Bopp Strut (for Le Sun Ra) & Hometime (for Cherry & Mbizo) two pieces recorded during 1998 as part of Music for Comet Hale-Bopp and the Proximal Dialectic which was issued in an edition of 150 90-minute cassettes as a second volume of The Urban Hearthcharms series (the first,of course, being Sedayne's Hometime ). The other pieces featured here are October Myth (Revisited) in which the crwth , koboz and curasaz lock horns to dazzling effect (dazzling as stars note:- Orion's rebirth in particular - glimpsed in the wee small hours over the vivid dark of The Deerness Valley...) Harvest Myth 1998 (which sets foot by furrows torn to rend once more the barren fertile - the Nature/Nurture debate writ large in a dialectical surge resolved only by the onset of glad winter) & last but not least Three Stories for Rapunzel an extended sequence of Proximal Indo-European Exotica which invigorates / re-invigorates diverse strands of Indo-European ancestral musics before dissolving away back into the wilderness from whence it sprung, as must we all, in time anyway - meanwhile, as Mark E. Smith once pointed out - ours is not to look back, ours is to continue the crack...

enquiries:- proximal@sedayne.co.uk





Review by David Cotner...

A whistle, rattle and something else besides.

That "something else" is what gave rise to the spate of ritualistic experimental groups in the 1980s (:zoviet*france:, Psychick TV, Korpses Katatonik, Sleep Chamber, Alien Brains, Metgumbnerbone, Masstishaddhu). The folkloric tradition blows through the thighbones of murdered men and the crop circles in the fields of Northern England, and Sedayne is from those last two aforementioned groups. The vague atmosphere of the exotic, hanging like rough incense, pervades these songs (not "tracks", or "pieces" per se) - devotional and charming and exceedingly good fuck music. It's only fair - at low volumes your plants will grow stronger because of it. Not because of your rutting, I mean. Oh, will you turn that music down!

Are the images of a fading past preserved in the blood of some? Stuck squarely in the recesses of a person's mind, refusing to let go? Is nostalgia a living thing? And yet for all the sombre mood and mystery, sometimes the frown turns upside down, travelling elseways through a furrowed brow and emerging as a smile. Musically speaking, that is. A slight twitter of birds now - or is it rats? Such was the sense of humour that suffused these groups in the 1980s. Sedayne sez:

"…and very different to (Masstishaddhu's) "Shekinah" too, although both are possessed of a similar droning darkness largely thanks to the crwth, a mediaeval bowed-lyre which I like to think of my main instrument - it's there on "Shekinah" but here it finds its true home - especially with the foxes in the track Now / Here"

"Hometime (for Cherry & Mbizo)" saunters down a pavèd path, voice matching the call of the horn and entering into a hall of bells. Resonance flows into the atmosphere, mixing with it, atomising and inhaled as a cat smells a mouse or you hold a lover, revelling in the overarching sensation of the exotic.

It crystallises the feeling of looking over a high cliff and realising with all your heart and soul that you never, ever have to fall over the edge.