Sproatly Smith - River Wye Suite CD/LP

£12.00

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Originally commissioned for the revival of the Hereford River Carnival in 2014. It's taken a long time to finish and bring it to you.

The river then was the most beautiful, now however, the river is dying thanks mainly to the endless expansion of chicken factories in the Wye valley. 21,000,000 chickens producing 1,200,000 tonnes of chicken shit, and nearly 2000 tonnes of nitrogen much of which runs off into the river.

The River Wye is a beauty, shaping Herefordshire’s countryside with its great undulating turns through the valleys. It is our connection out to the world - flowing southwest from this land-locked place, rising from the Cambrian mountains and moving ever more slowly down through the landscape from Hay through Hereford to Ross and then Chepstow - where it meets the Severn, and the sea. It is also our connection inwards - a wildlife corridor, drawing from the many wooded tributaries and streams that cross across our now frequently waterlogged county. This river is powerful - it pulls down walls and roads. It fills lanes, storms bridges, and swells to cover whole valleys. The river drowns. It is said that every Summer it takes its due.

But the river is also vulnerable - poisoned and polluted, under threat from a modern world cluster of siltation, habitat modification, over-extraction of water for irrigation, the expansion of invasive species, and many different forms of pollution. The most pressing and pervasive problem is the increase in algae. Our river now blooms bright green in the summer, and feels slimy on the skin if you care to swim.

So here we are - wanting to protect, restore and celebrate the Wye - #SaveTheWye. In the spring (all being well with the world) Hereford’s magical River Carnival will once again crown the river with lights and floating mermaids, rafts and music, and we will populate the water’s edge and crowd onto the bridges to pay it our respects.

Which is where this music started.…

Sproatly Smith’s "River Wye Suite", despite Heraclitus’s contention that “No man ever steps in the same river twice”, certainly drinks from the same sourced waters into which John Lennon suggested we should: “Turn off your mind / Relax and float downstream”.

Indeed, “Tomorrow Never” (ever) “Knows”.

This is dreamy and sometimes dark pastural psych folk music that drifts over the mystical countryside of Herefordshire pulsed by the twin melodic souls of Ian Smith and Matt King.

Oh my – this music would, indeed (again!), make all “slithy toves” and the “mimsy borogroves” do something to make all those “mome raths outgrabe”!

The first lengthy tune, Afon Gwy / The Water Is Wide, begins with river current sounds and a spoken instruction to “a gear shift inside of you” which flows into the beautiful acoustic guitar, bass, piano, sitar, violin, tabla instrumental bit that morphs into a vocal song with the gentle voices of Sarah Smith and Kate Gathercole. The tune echoes the sound of Chris Simpson’s Magna Carta during their melodic moments like Isle Of Skye and Midwinter or even the sublime acoustic moments during their adventurous Seasons album. And it also taps into the mystical British folk vein that glances in reverence at the sacred words etched into the quietude of so many ancient stones.

The spoken/musical vibe continues, Warm With The Light Of The Sun instructs with words about becoming “a dragonfly and a river”. Or, as The Beatles once evoked in the joyous simplicity of the words, “Yeah, yeah, yeah”. But River Song #2 unleashes those “furious bander snatches”, with more sitar, vocals, percussion, sinister electric fuzzy guitar, and sonic Hawkwind synth sounds. In juxtaposition to the first tunes, this song unleashes a mysterious girth that parallels that eerie line in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan opium “stately pleasure dome” poem, that describes “a deep romantic chasm” that is “enchanted / As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted”, all of which only enhances the surface river beauty.

Then, in yet another turnabout, Hidden Depths is a sound collage, with sax, odd music hall vocals, all sorts of weird sounds, some flute, some more odd music hall vocals, a few spoken words, and a trumpet that recalls the sort of thing the post-punk (and really cool!) band Rip Rig and Panic would put on the B-side of a single like, You’re My Kind Of Climate. Yeah, this is strange and (sort of) spooky stuff. And it allows for use of the descriptive word, groovy, without even a hint of a reviewer’s satire. This one seeps into the deep synapses of the brain.

The Merry Month Of May starts with yet another spoken soliloquy, but then flows into an acoustic song with more dual voices of Sarah and Kate, while keyboards swirl into the ever circular fluted universe. Nice. And Beltane Rain has an instrumental depth that counts infinite raindrops, with more heavenly vocals. This is music that doesn’t “rock around”, but rather stops any “clock” with a featherbed muffled comfort. Such beauty!

There’s a return to We Are The Sea (Octophonic Mix) which reprises a mystical big percussion glance in continual reverence into all those sacred words etched into an ancient stone, with added delicious drama. Finally, End is a simple melodic bit that fades slowly into any remembered acoustic psychedelic sunset that dances to the melody of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ because, of course, “Life is but a dream”. Brilliant!

Indeed, (my beloved) Barclay James Harvest were quite right when John Lees sang the song, A Tale Of Two Sixties. John Ketwig, in his Vietnam memoir, '...and a hard rain fell', wrote, “The butterfly cannot crawl back into the cocoon and change back into a familiar caterpillar”. But, thankfully, Sproatly Smith paints with Wonderland colours and breathes downstream omnipresence into Alice’s also familiar caterpillar, who is always ready to give, just like John Lennon’s Tomorrow tune, very melodic and quite sound advice.

Tracklist:

- CD -

1. River Wye Suite (Parts (i) Afon Gwy / The Water is Wide, (ii) River Song, (iii) Warm with the Light of the Sun, (iv) River Song, (v) Hidden Depths) (vi) The Merry Month of May)
2. Beltane Rain
3. Ethelbert and Mary
4. We Are Sea
5. Snake Day
6. From an Acorn
7. We Are Sea (Octophonic Mix)

- LP -

About this product: this release is available on CD and LP formats.

The CD is housed in a gatefold card sleeve.

The LP is pressed on black vinyl. Includes a photo, postcard and download code.