Thornton Heath, London
05/02/2022
With Newham Folk Archive and Seamus Cater
This first Cosy Nook of 2022 brings together two original takes on folk music filtered through experimental or improvised approaches to working with archival material and storytelling.
Programme
Newham Folk Archive
aka Shona Handley (voice, objects) and Adam Kinsey ( electronics, voice)
Traces of Alexander J. Ellis (2021)
Seamus Cater (voice,skhismic concertina)
A new set of songs drawn and composed from the archive of Alexander J. Ellis (1814-1890), amateur concertinist and translator of On the Sensations of Tone (Helmholtz 1863, Ellis 1875). Personal, musical and scientific texts have been redacted into songs with Cater’s instrument tuned in the Skhismic temperament of Ellis, resulting in a kind of pre-folk music nodding towards the Victorian.
Newham Folk Archive
An ongoing project weaving together Oral History, Folk Law, Truth and Myth. A sonic convergence of sound art, improvised electronics and story telling explores the less well known history of the London borough bordered by the river Roding, Thames and Lea. @newhamfolkarchive
Seamus Cater
A British musician based in Amsterdam. His music is a combination of song writing and acoustic instrumental composition with minimal, or repetitive playing techniques. Here he draws from the archive of Alexander J. Ellis (1814-1890), amateur concertinist and translator of On the Sensations of Tone (Helmholtz 1863, Ellis 1875).
Cosy Nook
(since 2016) a small cove in South London, where we occasionally come together to play, listen to and share words, sounds and other gems, polished or unpolished. (Named after a small rocky bay littered with gem stones smoothed by the fierce tidal waters of New Zealand South Island).