We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Free Mini Album : Musicke for Ye Village Fireworks, 5th November 1978

by Hermione Harvestman

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

1.

about

This was a sort of performance I suppose, in that I was asked to provide 20 minutes of music for the village fireworks 'display' on Bonfire Night 1978 - and offered to do the whole thing entirely live, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

The night was dark, damp, cold and quite miserable, so I rigged up my equipment in a first floor bedroom of my friend's house which overlooked the village green, and hooked it up to a borrowed PA which was sighted outside. It was so cold I didn't even open the windows, just sat there in the warmth of a much tamer fire than the blazing conflagration outside, looking out as the villagers stood in grim silhouette and set off their damp squibs into the misty drizzly night. The effect was rather quite sublime really, at least it was for me, improvising from a distance in response to the general mood of the thing as I perceived it from behind glass.

It was only afterwards that I picked up on a few mutterings to the effect that they expected something more 'accessible' and 'upbeat' and even 'more like Kraftwerk than Tangerine Dream' (!). One person even said my music had depressed them quite as much as the weather. Naturally, I told them to go fuck themselves - telling the ungrateful swine that they really ought to be happy I'd bothered coming out on such a dreadful night, let alone put the energy into providing them with a unique piece of music - adding that I'd recorded it, and that if anyone wanted a copy for a souvenir I'd gladly do them a cassette for a small gratuity.

Needless to say there were few takers, though several of the village youngsters were especially keen, which made the whole venture worthwhile. I was less sure, however, when they said my music had enhanced the hallucinatory experience of watching customarily crap fireworks whilst tripping out of their collective box on magic mushrooms, but I regarded their wayward vision as more in keeping with the pagan soul of ritual misrule that rests at the very heart of such festivities, however so remote this might be to contemporary participants. Shame really.

Hermione Harvestman.

credits

released November 5, 2013

All music improvised in real time by Hermione Harvestman. Editing and digital transfer Hermione Harvestman with suggestions (mostly ignored) by Sean Breadin; November 2001.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

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
... more

contact / help

Contact Hermione Harvestman

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

If you like Hermione Harvestman, you may also like: