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Articles of an Imaginary Faith

by Hermione Harvestman

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Earthwork 02:57
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Dr Wu 02:32
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UFO 01:27
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about

Hermione fed 'Articles of an Imaginary Faith' to me track by track over two weeks during the summer of 2008 after we'd set her up with a PC & decent sound-card and moved to Lancashire when my wife got promotion. By that time she (Hermione!) had become adept at transferring her analogue tape-stock to digital WAV files via Soundforge, and would post me the results via YouSendIt, somehow respecting my judgement to further clean them up or otherwise 'enhance' them. I confess my approach in this regard was simply to flatten a few speaker-threatening spikes so as to effect a smoother normalisation to my customary 87% without applying any compression whatsoever. Her editing and mastering was, as ever, otherwise meticulous.

She was 78 at the time, and whilst her faculties were firing on all cylinders (she was still planting and harvesting, requiring only a minimum input from the local district and community nursing team and home help) she no longer trusted her own hearing to do anything other than enjoy her old recordings - always at amazing volumes on her hi-fi, often when she was working in her plots in the garden. To hear this stuff blasting from her open windows over the Durham countryside as we arrived to pay a visit was always an unalloyed joy.

She'd pretty much stopped composing at this point, no longer trusting her aesthetic judgement, though she did experiment briefly with the possibilities of composing using the computer (she flirted briefly with Ableton Live 2) but soon rejected it as being 'too artificial' - an interesting perspective from someone for whom new technology had been her every delight, however so entrenched she was in analogue technology and monophonic synths & sequencers. As she once wrote to me:

'Trouble is with computers (....) they make it all so damn normal that it becomes a means of reproduction rather than creation - it's the modern equivalent of folk music or the parlour piano - which can only be a good thing in terms of artistic democracy - but ultimately, I feel, it reduces your options and becomes a series over ever decreasing circles with respect of going 'out there'.

Old school electronica was experimental by default - it was eccentric, idiosyncratic, and pioneering - it was a frontier exploration of the wilderness without a map. I'm not saying my work was in any way pioneering (on the contrary - I used it more for looking backwards than forwards) but the ethos of raw sound and pure improvisation were essential to my sound-sonic faith.

Sadly, it would seem Raw Sound and Pure Improvisation are anathema to the overly prescribed digital realms of the home computer - though I have to agree with you there is some amazing music being made, amazing traditions and amazing musicians - just that the frontier's maybe beginning to get a bit crowded of late and the hip are consequently diminishing their cool in a jockeying for status and position which is anathema to me.

It would seem all music is doomed to become traditional sooner or later - to some that is a very good thing, but the older I get the more I begin to pine for the wilderness!'

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The 14 pieces of 'Articles of an Imaginary Faith' were recorded during the week of the Summer Solstice 1989 (Sunday 18th - 25th) and represent Hermione at her most personal - from her bitterness at the human condition and religion, to the bitter-sweet wistfulness of her personal remembrances. Owing to personal time constraints I'll be uploading them in dribs and drabs over the next couple of months, but until the complete sequence is uploaded, each piece will be freely available for download in maximum quality.

Thank you for your interest and support.

Sean Breadin (Sedayne) - 30th August 2013

credits

released August 30, 2013

Composition, editing, digital transfer : Hermione Harvestman. Additional assistance - Sean Breadin.

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Hermione Harvestman UK

'I feel like Wainwright - we are both hermetic ramblers. He made his books for when he was no longer capable of rambling his beloved fells, and I made my music for when I'm no longer able to ramble the by-ways of Albion - but only to listen, and think "Was that really me? That solitary figure who stood in a landscape dreaming of ages past in dread fear of the future."

Hermione Harvestman
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