Albums frequently lose creative steam. It happens constantly to bands both creative and drab. Often the most interesting piece of musicianship on an album are the “in-between songs”– the noises and spurts of creativity when the songwriting become less masterpieces than space. You know the phenomenon– there’s a few songs then some new instrumentation enters the fold. Perhaps a piano or a 12-string guitar. There’s an absence of lyrics or maybe just a vocal harmony. And it’s the shortest, simplest, most repetitive song on the album.
It’s also the most creative. You may not relate to it, but that is the point. The in-between songs, as a rule, don’t include you in their plans. They don’t exist to bring you closer to the album. They are disharmonious moments of frustration and bliss– the counteraction to writing and recording an album.
The Hidden Folk is 19 of these songs. Short bursts of creativity, easily mistaken for dolorous or capricious mood music. They should not be dismissed so easily, however.
The harp, the lyre and the thumb piano are but three of a myriad of acoustic instruments that intermingle playfully and pan from ear to ear (this album is best heard on headphones). And with each, comes the feeling of removal– a good thing. These songs are removed from the normal landscape. They are whimsical movements that move like nymphs and fairies through forests of rapid movements. Wind blown leaves, drips of rain, the clouds barely visible, crunching of leaves; the songs create a whirlwind of images without having to try too hard.
Not to say they are effortless. To the contrary, Robin Crutchfield seems like he labored over these songs to make whimsy each song’s marrow. Each is injected with a vision and given an energy that permeates through even the thickness of “Insect Machine” or the lightheartedness of the albums opener “We Find Our Way In.” “Poison Splinter,” my personal favorite, feels like it lasts 4 minutes and it is one of the shortest on the record coming in at just over a minute.
The point of The Hidden Folk may not be the distance between the songs and the listener or the openness of the forest. The point may not be to traipse through the woods. The point may lay lax in the motion. What Robin Crutchfield has created expands the plane of sound beyond acoustic instruments, beyond folk tales or moods. He has created the album within an album– the album that most cannot write. The songs written in short bursts of creativity, the throw-aways for most, the ones outside form are common knowledge and long-form fodder for Crutchfield. It just may surprise the listener how important and necessary his work is– even when the songs seem caught in-between.
Robin Crutchfield: Reviews
Robin Crutchfield - The Hidden Folk (Important Records)
Without looking at the name written on the sleeve it would be impossible to believe this album was the work of Robin Crutchfield, former member of downtown N.Y.C. no wave band DNA. There is none of that group's jagged, high-tension art-splatter on The Hidden Folk; instead, this is a very creepy disc of short instrumentals performed on harp, zither, percussion, and other objects made of wood and string. It's not folk music, exactly; it's closer in spirit to the instrumental interludes that appear on some black metal albums. Tape hiss and weird panning effects give some tracks the effect of field recordings captured in some darkened forest, while others sound like acoustic versions of early-'80s work by the Residents ("Mind the Dwarves," a short piece for either marimba or music box, could easily have come off one of the Mole Trilogy albums). Taken as a whole, immersive experience, The Hidden Folk feels like the score to a horror movie about city folk lost in -- and eventually consumed by -- the woods: something like the original version of The Wicker Man. When a sudden rattle goes off midway through "Pearl Sorting Pixies," most listeners will undoubtedly jump in their chairs. Unsettling stuff. Phil Freeman, All Music Guide
Robin Crutchfield-
***
The Hidden Folk
(Important Records)
No wave veteran Crutchfield (late of DNA) "went green" 10 years ago, trading amplified squall for pastoral soundscapes. His fourth solo set has 19 evocatively titled miniatures played on harp, lyre, psaltery, tambura, thumb piano and bells. Pearl Sorting Pixies' dreamlike chime and deftly plucked cascade Zither Madness are among the highlights of an eerie, neo-medieval tapestry.
MA
Robin Crutchfield’s newest album The Hidden Folk is dreamlike and otherworldly – music so underground it can only come from the Hollow Hills. Created in a ‘miner’ key with harp and drone, the 19 tracks have wonderfully evocative song titles like The Hollow Oak My Humble Home, Pearl Sorting Pixies and Trolling The Tin Mines. Please do not think this is twee ‘New Age’ music however! Although every track is infused with whimsy, listening to The Hidden Folk sends shivers up your spine – in the best possible way! It is an album for twilight times and witching hours. Absolutely enticing, enchanting and entrancing…
Robin Crutchfield The Hidden Folk Important RecordsA No wave innovator in the 70s (as a founder of DNA) and synth-pop pioneer in the 80s (with his revolving project Dark Day), Robin Crutchfield began a third act in 2000 by, as he puts it, "going green". Using traditional acoustic instruments such as the harp and lyre, he focused his music on woodsy folklore. Though no lyrics have emerged, song titles often refer to myths of the forest and the creatures that dwell there.
Crutchfield is so obsessed with these themes that the release of his latest solo album, The Hidden Folk, coincides with the publication of a book called Eleven Faerie Tales. The latter offers a literal representation of Crutchfield's ideas, but his songs build a subtler narrative. They're not so much stories as scenarios, sonic vignettes that play like snippets of a large tale. As Crutchfield treks through these glimpses of scenery - most of the 19 tracks last less than two minutes - images rise from his sounds like frames flickering out of darkness.
That's due more to the atmospheres than the songs inside them. His melodies are as simple as the myths they represent, but his aural environments evoke not just the forest - wind whistling through branches, water dripping from leaves, twigs crackling under footsteps - but also the eerie scores Angus MacLise created for the 60s films of Ira Cohen and Ron Rice. There's the misty hiss of "Mind The Dwarves", the echoey chime of "Gnomes Underground", the chilling rattle of "It All Ends Here". And Crutchfield's devout playing creates atmosphere on its own - take "Pearl Sorting Pixies", whose cascade of thumb piano feels thicker than rain, and "Wood Mallet Knockabout", which piles up layers of percussion like logs onto a fire. As with all of Crutchfield's work in the past decade, those songs show how much richness and complexity can sprout from simple tools.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT "THE HIDDEN FOLK" ON IMPORTANT RECORDS.
Amazing , so playful yet serious , so fun, capricious, yet mischievous
and nefarious at the same time! lovely!
--Devendra Banhart
"The drone aspect brings out the ancient calling of this beautiful instrument .. and [Robin is] now meshing all [his] musical history into one looping stream... soul music."
--Jim Fouratt, cultural critic; Stonewall activist.
"...moments of minimal and artful gestures...genuine resonance with mystic love sound...very gentle yet moving."--Thurston Moore/Sonic Youth
"...very cool!"--Byron Coley, writer/contributor to The Wire
"...completely fresh. Using a minor scale tuned in perfect intervals, the music is sensuous and exotic, a gorgeous sound."--Rhys Chatham/Guitar Orchestra Composer
"...like the Egyptian blue lotus. Chopping vegetables is more
like dreaming about chopping vegetables."--Kurt Weisman/Feathers
Random responses from various listeners:
wow...really nice..super unique...very cool!!...We dig.
...Soothing!...absolutely Gorgeous !!!! This is wonderful!...Lovely, absolutely lovely!...Peaceful...the perfect music....beautiful... and funny too...This is very exciting...Mesmerizing...very sweet and beautiful music...very nice!
Important Rec. Robin Crutchfield : The Hidden Folk (US,2009)****
Some people seem to have their own sort of series of harmonies and can put them into some compositions these are more or less like minimalism of sound vibrations living forth in whatever melodic loop in time they express in themselves, as remains in time, of comparable descriptions of these specific harmonic vibrations. Moondog worked partly this way, and even Florian Fricke’s Popol Vuh have their series of effective combinations, even when adding story lines or different ideas (for Moondog) or mantra-like contexts with more words (Fricke).
Also Robin Crutchfield has learned well to worked out his pallet with more and more instruments and ideas, of mostly harp like vibrations of some sort of nature. All of them provoke something as if having something of the vibrations of the elves world, of the hidden folk world. The conditions in which the melodic compositions come to life aren’t, at first too complex, but the harmonies in these melodies are free and vibrate more, silently, softly, brushed like a language hidden within each stroke and movement of the harp hands, while for instance a tampura drone whirls around it, or combinations that provoke the woods. Also heard for instance are some comparable rhythms as if created from scraping wood in a forest, or as if produced by some strange woodworm rhythm or so (on track 4). Other instruments seems to have been derived from a well picked sample of harmonies, like that of on tin pots (?) (track 5), wood as if from African origin, but calmer, more from the earth message itself (on track 7). Others are like found environmental loops in time with a message of rhythm (track 9). You can hear a thumb piano with an ethereal hypnotic cloud of rhythms (10), forming melodies as if spreading itself like whirling feathers in space (11). Just a few small tracks return like remembered themes from the previous albums, themes which then thoroughly intermingle in some other tracks forming new combinations of themes like wheels in a clock, forming together a new time and space, vividly surreal, like being provided with the time given in a dream (13). Very sweet, like a dance on wooden block sounds, is track 14. Yes, the wooden sound themes are really becoming more than a quicksand of images and vibrations of the elves worlds to be left in just a loop, they start to last longer, are trusted for it, and become like changing and evolving images of a puppet shadow theatre (just listen to track 16). The harp starts to play something more like small dances, with quick steps of small feet (17). While the pallet is found, its harmonies and sort of message in which vibration this is fitting, the messages become much more than quick experiences, catching an elf in the wink of an eye, leaving an odour in the form of a melodic loop, the appearances, even in the format of just a few minutes long are longer, and hold their visibility longer, so that you can see and hear something like the elves dancing. When the final track sounds like a musical box it is as if this story is going to close its curtain, is going to sleep. Was it all but flashes from a dream ? (19)...
The strongest album of Robin so far.
ROBIN CRUTCHFIELD'S NEW MUSIC SOUNDS THE PLAINTIVE CALLS OF ENCHANTED MINI-HARPS IN MYSTERIOUS FORESTS
Of "ForOurFriendsInTheEnchantedOtherworld" Devendra Banhart writes,
“...beguiling, powerful, hypnotic, mesmerizing, commanding, delicately unnerving, lilting, mellow,” and “tense as hell.”
Songs for Faerie Folk by Robin Crutchfield
Experimental artist Robin Crutchfield has a career in music and performance art dating back nearly 30 years. His three solo albums released since 2006 have moved away from his electronic roots and straight into a magical other world of elves and faeries. Songs for Faerie Folk, Toadstool Soup and the most recent For Our Friends in the Enchanted Otherworld combine harp, tanpura, bells and samples of birdsong and other forest friends. It is quite minimal, at at times a little eerie, but definitely very enchanting. Also of note are the simply brilliant song titles, including – Dwarfish Determination, Cobweb Pie, and Spider’s Restless 8th Leg!
--www.faenation.com
Robin Crutchfield - ForOurFriendsInTheEnchantedOtherworld
Robin Crutchfield's secretive nocturnal CD turns out to be a subtle favorite with its delicate, close, and modest compositions. A filigree of harp and bells arranged with natural intricacy is at the core of each track, which then radiates out with oscillating drones or meanders beneath leafy shadows in the careful paths of quick birds, illuminated moths, and many-legged iridescent insects. The "Stamping Ground" keeps gentle time with a thump that is very likely the real stomp of a booted foot; "Charmed Sleep" traces fey spirals of harp in the air. This music is like a secret glimpse into the life of something tiny and ordered, yet wild and touched by a beautiful natural magic that is too often overlooked.
Robin Crutchfield - For Our Friends In The Enchanted Otherworld (HAND/EYE CD)
Robin Crutchfield is one of the more enigmatic musicians around. After making waves as a performance artist in New York in the late 70s, he played keyboards in the original version of DNA with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori, until deciding they weren't as interesting as they might be.
He then formed Dark Day, originally a trio with Nina Canal of Gynecologists/Ut and Nancy Arlen of Mars. This version never played live, unlike later line-ups with Jim Jarmusch, members of Tuxedomoon and others. Dark Day explored wide varieties of keyboard textures and machine theories, and went through several distinct phases.
In its final incarnation, the group investigated some of the odder possibilities lurking inside British folk traditions. The vibe of their last album, Darkest Before Dawn, was akin to Comus or Current 93.
Abandoning the group name, Crutchfield delved ever more deeply into this style; and his explorations are continued on For Our Friends In The Enchanted Otherworld, his third solo album.
The music is largely based on instrumental harp glissandos: shimmering cascades of notes pouring down amidst birdsong, tanpura, bells and other woodland instrumentation. Crutchfield's compositions still have some of his old mechanistic hallmarks, but they've been recast as steampunk visions - huge delicate wooden wheels, spinning and plucking and plunking inside his fevered imagination. Which turns out to be a great place to visit - somewhere between Early Music, new volk and contemporary classical.
This album is not quite like anything else you'll hear this year, and it's pretty goddamn brilliant.
Robin Crutchfield - For Our Friends In The Enchanted Otherworld (Hand/Eye h/e032 CD)
Known to most as the keyboardist for New York legends DNA, Robin Crutchfield's recent output couldn't be further removed from the jagged no-wave of his former band. For Our Friends ln The Enchanted Otherworld is a collection of pristine harp recordings. Delicate and gentle, these 15 tracks are mini case studies of the otherworldly. Crutchfield adds droning tanpura, wine glasses, bells, flute and other light instrumentation but leaves the focus on his harp. Its intriguing music; entirely alien yet oddly comforting-new age meditations without a hint of irony or cliche.
Robin Crutchfield : For our Friends in the Enchanted Otherworld (Hand/Eye US,2007)****
The instrumentals by Robin Crutchfield are played by harp, tanpura, wine glass, toad, wooden flute, bells, stomping boot, jinglebox, flying machines, sampler, and forest friends.
And an Enchanted world this is : very magical minimalism, miniatures that sound very often like dew from elves that flies by with the wind, and this expressed in a musical form. The first three tracks are small variations of harp with droning tanpura. On “Finding Our Woodland Way” the harp dances (-,from right to left,-) between sounds of forest creatures, as if this describes the presence of a Chinese elf or spirit creature. New also is “In Crystal Caves” where there are used airy glass sounds in combination with harp. Between other organic harp tracks (partly with additional sounds), “The Birds Know” is another original, short track, which is based upon a magical forest sounds that become keyboard-like loops. “Enchanted Ice Cream Truck” is magical like wind-chimes, as if combined with tiny bits of piano sounds, and it sounds like a natural musical box. Between two other harp theme tracks, “Magic Puffbox” is also another short beautiful weird moment, of remixed sounds, with a world on its own. “Dwarfish determination” gives an original variation of this particular world, sound rich and minimal in its nature, but still much more a composition of a dance than a loop.
This is very descriptive music, a true musical ode to the little friends in the enchanted other world.