For many people, folk music conjures up an image of a bedraggled musician with a long beard, resembling a film extra from JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings and bemoaning the back catalogue of Fairport Convention or Bob Dylan. Thankfully, in 2005, this image is beginning to wane, due to the emergence of a number of artists who are offering an updated and remixed take on traditional folk music in which acoustic and computer-generated sounds combine. Leading the way are acts like Adem, Four Tet (AKA Kieran Hebden), Gravenhurst, James Yorkston and The Athletes and KT Tunstall, to name a few.
These artists first and foremost see themselves as singer/songwriters but the UK music press has invented a new style to define their work, ‘twisted folk’ or ‘folktronica’ — which can essentially be described as the twisting or distorting of traditional folk and roots music by fusing it with electronic beats, looped sounds and samples. Singer/songwriter Adem is not happy with the new tag, suggesting it’s nothing more than a marketing gimmick dreamt up by the music press.
‘Twisted folk is just one of the many attempts to bracket a current set of musicians together,’ he says. ‘Alt.folk, nu-folk, weird folk, post-folk and a slew of other descriptions are all flying around; made up by the press, exploited by the industry, and welcomed by most of the audience as it helps explain a music without having to hear it.’
Adem is well aware of the pitfalls of stereotyping a new breed of musicians and music, as he is a successful singer/songwriter in his own right. In March 2004 he released his debut solo album Homesongs to critical acclaim and, along with Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), he’s also one third of instrumental electronic trio Fridge. According to Adem, Homesongs is ‘set in and around the domestic environment from whence it sprang’. It was, not surprisingly, demoed in his bedroom in Whitechapel, east London and later recorded in a spacious apartment in Stoke Newington, north London. His vocal style has been compared to artists like Bono and Jeff Buckley.
Adem is also the curator of the two-day UK music festival Homefires which was launched in 2004 in conjunction with UK music promotions company Eat Your Own Ears. Adem says of this collaboration: ‘Tom Baker of Eat Your Own Ears is
without doubt the best promoter in London. He arrived and blew fresh air into London’s music scene. I played a few Eat Your Own Ears shows and we got to know each other. He was the obvious choice to ask to help me get Homefires up and running.’ The event was designed to showcase the best artists from the acoustic music scene. Singer/songwriters like Joanna Newsom, Willy Mason, Gruff Rhys (lead singer with the Super Furry Animals), Beth Orton, Bill Callahan and folk legend Bert Jansch, all performed at the event last year.
This year’s headline acts included Scotland’s James Yorkston and The Athletes, Badly Drawn Boy and current melodic pop darlings The Magic Numbers.
Rob Challice, founder of Twisted Folk.com gives his own description of what twisted folk is all about: ‘It’s not a genre but simply an umbrella under which musicians whose sound has in some ways been enriched by folk roots and roots history can gather. Folk music has never gone away, so it’s wrong to talk in 2005 about a new folk movement or alt.folk as if there is some sort of revival. It is true to say, however, that there’s a renewed interest and a much wider remit for what constitutes folk, taking in everything from traditional music to electronica. Folk music has always been “the voice of the people”. In the US, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie were early icons of the tradition in the fifties, and in the UK a domestic folk scene emerged in the early sixties with the likes of Ian Campbell, Davy Graham, Anne Briggs, Nic Jones, Bert Jansch, Shirley and Dolly Collins and the Waterson Family paving the way.’
So has the old definition of folk as essentially community music changed in the UK? Could this new breed of singer/songwriters signal the end of the UK’s centuries old folk music tradition? Adem seems to think so: ‘The definition [of folk] changed some time ago. Fairport Convention being considered a folky band is totally understandable, but even though they would play with traditional ideas, what they were doing was a far cry from the traditional idea of what folk was about (and that was the point). Way before they played their first traditional tune, things had started changing. The ability to capture and distribute sound challenged the idea of what folk music was about. I think the way traditional folk is seen now is very different from even 50 years ago.’
Ian Anderson, editor of worldwide roots music magazine fRoots agrees: ‘Folk has become a completely devalued term. The general media use it to mean either “anybody with an acoustic guitar who writes songs” or “blokes with beards and
their fingers in their ears”. Personally, I think of it as music with roots in a tradition. The stuff I think of as English folk is definitely music of a community, but not in the old sense of a physical community like a village — the community is of like-minded people spread nationwide and comes together only at festivals and ceilidhs.’
Debates about traditional folk music versus twisted folk music aside, there is no doubt that a wealth of new writing talent has emerged on the UK music scene, which is difficult to ignore. For instance, female singer/songwriter KT Tunstall,
who’s supported blues/pop sensation Joss Stone and whose debut album Eye to the Telescope has sold 180,000 copies in the UK alone. Her vocal style has been compared to Rickie Lee Jones and Carol King and she cites Billie Holiday, PJ Harvey and Johnny Cash amongst her influences. US singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom has also made an impact upon the UK music scene. In June of this year,
Newsom played alongside legendary musician, poet, writer and female icon Patti Smith at the Meltdown Festival (curated by Patti Smith), at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Newsom combines ‘deranged’ vocals with the harp, an instrument she began playing when she was eight years old. On her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, she sings about sleep, milk, teeth, bridges, balloons, cake, owls, burning boats and grammar, which could be described as different subject matter.
If KT Tunstall and Joanna Newsom are the rising stars of the twisted folk or folktronica scene then Four Tet AKA Kieran Hebden is the granddaddy, with four albums under his belt and support slots with the likes of Radiohead and Super Furry Animals (in 2002) and collaboration with legendary drummer Steve Reid (James Brown, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti). Hebden has recently tried to escape the twisted folk or folktronica tag with the release of his fourth album Everything
Ecstatic. He says: ‘It is at the core of my thinking to always make sure I don’t repeat the past and instead push myself somewhere new. The way some people would perceive my music — particularly if they read I was making folktronica — was not making any sense to me anymore, and was beginning to drive me crazy.’
James Yorkston and The Athletes are also shining lights. Not only has the band produced the gorgeous single Surf Song/ Song to the Siren — a cover of a Tim Buckley classic — they have also worked with other singer/songwriters under the banner of the Fence Collective. This is a core group of about thirty musicians (largely from the Scottish village of Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife), performing under pseudonyms such as King Creosote, Lone Pigeon and Super Shitbox.
Twisted folk or folktronica may not be as big as the Brit-pop movement in the early- to mid-90s but it looks set to have a good go trying — minus the beards of course and the warm ale. To quote Bob Dylan: ‘the times they are a-changin’
The Times They Are A-Changin’, New Routes magazine, Issue 5
http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-music-publications-new-routes-issue-5.htm