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A brief history of the Aeolian harp
Legend has it that Hermes, while strolling along a beach, heard the wind playing music on the dried sinews stretched in a tortoise shell and thus discovered the lyre. The instruments are named after Aeolus who is the Greek God of the wind. This tying up of the God and the instrument took place not in Greek but in more recent classical times.
It became rather popular in the 18 th and 19th century
Shelley, in "Fragments connected with Epipsychidon" remarks:
There is a power, a love, and joy, a God
Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode,
A Pythian exhaltation, which inspires Love,
only love - a wind which o'er the wires
Of the soul's giant harp
There is a mood which language faints beneath
Keats writes:
Behold
The clear religion of heaven!
Fold
A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness
And soothe thy lips; hist, when the airy stress
Of music's kiss impreganates the free winds,
And with a sympathetic touch unbinds
Eolian magic from their lucid wombs.
An interesting observation from Jean George Kastner in his "La Harp d'Eole et la Musique Cosmique" published in 1856...."The Aeolian Harp has singular properties liked intimately and sensibly to the poetic charm of its music. It is recognized that it exerts a powerful effect upon the nervous system and can cause very diverse - even opposing impressions according to the temperament of the individual." Roger Winfield will certainly back this up. On his original privately produced cassette of "Windsongs" he even had printed "Do not use whilst driving" on the cover to ensure that the listener had a meaningful, rather than a terminal, experience.
By the turn of the twentieth century the Aeolian Harp was heard of no more, drowned out by the noisy grinding wheels of a society that demands instant gratification. To listen properly to the Aeolian Harp one needs to stop still and wait patiently for the exquisite moments the wind can create.
Aeolus has never stopped singing his songs.
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Roger Winfield - Windsongs The Sound of Aeolian Harps ( 91 ^ 97mb)
Whilst Winfield was living on the Preselli Hills in West Wales his fascination was sparked off by hearing the breeze playing across a guitar left outside. This led to the creation of weird and wonderful contraptions that made unique musical sounds but lacked volume. To overcome this problem, experimenting with mikes he eventually settled for magnetic pick-ups close to the strings. Several years later the idea of an Aeolian Harp orchestra began to develop and with the aid of experienced instrument makers Roger created the sculptural ensemble that are featured on this album. (made from wood, perspex, fiberglass and metal, the instruments were designed to be aesthetically pleasing as well as technically functional. Each instrument was designed to take a particular gauge of metal string; the largest instruments strung with bass strings, the smallest with thinner strings so creating a soprano effect).
Windsongs" was the product of a four-month sojourn in Spain during the winter and spring of 1989. He decided to go south because of the dryer weather. Recording Aeolian Harps involves a lot of outside work and the prospect of doing this during the course of a British winter seemed decidedly uninviting!
The first venue was a balcony twenty stories up on a deserted tower block in a similarly empty Mediterranean resort. Day one arrived with a full scale hurricane that set the harps shrieking like banshees. Roger eventually discovered that with a wind at this velocity the best sounds were to be found in the bass register. A consequence of this is the first track, the "North Wind". Imagine if you will a storm tossed sea, a shrieking wind and an individual frantically trying to batten down instruments that threaten to go flying off with every new blast of wind! Roger describes this experience as "traumatic, scary but fun!" It took fifteen hours to complete the basic recording.
Much of the "East Wind" track was recorded at the same venue. Additional material recorded from an earlier East wind in Bristol was added on during the editing process. The first three minutes of the "South Wind" features a solo harp being played by a gentle zephyr that wafted by from some nearby hills, and the sitar-like section from the "West Wind" were also recorded from this balcony. The next venue was set in the foothills of the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains in Southern Andalucia. It turned out to be the perfect spot for recording the wind. During the morning the breezes drifted up from the coast and in mid-afternoon they swung back from the mountains - regular as clockwork. Here most of the work on the "South Wind" and "West Wind" tracks took place during warm sunny and gentle weather.
Back in the UK the material was edited in a recording studio. It must be emphasized that although not all the sounds on each track were recorded simultaneously, the tracks contain only recordings of the wind direction ascribed to it. The four tracks "Windsongs 1, 2, 3 and 4" are a combination of other recordings made in Spain and Bristol. Once the album was completed Roger Winfield began to work on the possibility of live performances. The first show took place in June 1990 and since then he has traveled all over the UK performing to fascinated and appreciative audiences. The charm of the live show is that one experiences the rising and falling of the wind's song in the presence of the wind that is creating it - an almost mystic experience for some.
As one music critic put it: "If you can have your brain massaged by music, the Aeolian Harps are the instruments to do it!"
Windfields second album Roger Winfield - Voices of the Wind ( see Rho-Xs's Inside Out Binaural (10/06/07) ) is both a sequal and a contrast to Windsongs, his first collection of Aeolian harp recordings. Since then he has toured throughout the UK setting up the harps at a variety of locations (rural and urban) the magical sounds never failing to amaze the audiences. During that time he has created a new esemble of instruments so a new layer of sound can be heard from the wind playing thru the strings.
01 - Northwind (8:59)
02 - Southwind (9:095
03 - Eastwind (8:13)
04 - Westwind (8:21)
05 - Windsong 1 (5:13)
06 - Windsong 2 (7:02)
07 - Windsong 3 (3:41)
08 - Windsong 4 (6:58)
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VA - Sundaze 1 (00 ^ 146mb)
Ten years ago i used to scour the internet for new music, obviously things were just getting rolling Napster getting all the headlines and it offered an insight what was out there, but to search for something, firstly you have to know of it..basicly exchanges like Napsters delivered nothing new, just more of what you knew.. There were other music sites, one of which still exists-Epitonic.com that offered some free MP3's from acts unknown..often with a short description of the music. Anyway i used to visit them quiet frequently and downloaded plenty. As at that time i had a 5 gig HD (currently 2000-ooops), i used to burn away a lot, now this isnt that satisfying so i tried to compile with a certain atmosphere/mood in mind.. One of the labels i used was Sundaze, as it happens i came across the first one i burnt and low and behold the disk read secure...so here it is a bit of nostalgia from me from the days download speeds were low and insecure...As for discovering new artists..i have 6 Molvaer albums now, 4 by Fila Brazilia 3 from Holmes and Isolee, one by Farina and Afterlife and Muslimgauze...yes downloading is killing music...duh..ps made the cover earlier today..like it ?
01 - Niels Petter Molvaer - Platonic (Herbaliser remix) (5:19)
02 - Fila Brazilia - Naughahide (5:04)
03 - Jhno - Pillage (4:23)
04 - Sounds From The Ground - Sweet Dust (5:32)
05 - Mark Farina - Midnight Calling (5:13)
06 - Spoon Wizzard - Shoe's Monkey (6:06)
07 - Sounds From The Ground - Drawn To A Woman (8:21)
08 - Afterlife - Dub In Ya Mind (Beachclub mix) (5:10)
09 - Isolee - Tout Se Complique (4:10)
10 - Muslimgauze - Abu Nidal (7:27)
11 - David Holmes - No Man's Land (6:20)
12 - Sounds From The Ground - Triangle (10:03)
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Following the murder of the delegates at an eco-troubleshooting conference on Pancake Day Island, Nebulous, Paula and Harry travel to Atlantis while Rory attempts to clean up for the new delegates, where the Professor battles the legendary Kraken, Paula is shocked to learn that she is actually the human/Atlantean daughter of Atlantis's queen and Doctor Klench tries to destroy an eco-summit using Altantis' defence system.
Nebulous returns to his old university, Bridgeoxton, in order to solve the mystery of the disappearance of several lecturers. K.E.N.T. goes undercover, with Nebulous being a history lecturer. Rory, doing a course in Media Studies, discovers that the disappearances have been caused by the Infernons, working alongside a history lecturer who is trying to destroy the past, so there is less of it to teach. Guest stars Julia Davis.
Nebulous meets up with Doctor Klench, who claims to have met the Byborg who have persuaded him to no longer being evil. The Byborg allow people to go back in time and correct their greatest mistake. In Nebulous's case, this was the destruction of the Isle of Wight. He travels back to Janril 57, 2069, in order to correct his error, but it turns out to be another of Klench's traps. Meanwhile, there is something unusual about Sir Ronald's share deals.
Professor Nebulous is finds himself trapped in a time loop, on the weekend omnibus of a reality television endlessly repeating like "an insane merry-go-round, each elliptical revolution taking it further from reality, the children on the merry-go-round clinging to the brightly painted wooden horses for security, but the horses are starting to mutate, turning into Shetland Ponies". Escaping from the show, the Professor finds himself on Sirius, the Dog Star (a.k.a. Poodle Sphere Six) coming to the end of his tenth season.
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