Xenis emputae travelling Band Psychogeographic ether-folk (an interview with Phil Legard by Bart De Paepe) Phil Legard started his musical project Xenis Emputae Travelling Band shortly after a visit to Men-an-Tol (Cornwall) where he followed an ancient rite of crawling through a hole of an old tomb. Legard felt reborn, bought a bunch of instruments and started making music which he himself describes as ‘psychogeographic ether-folk’: melancholic music inspired by nature, landscapes and local history. Archaic drones that find their ways in releases on labels like Deserted Village, Foxglove and especially his own Larkfall. In this interview you did with Brad Rose a while ago you mentioned you’re writing a book about dew. Are you still working on that? What got you interested in this subject and what have you found out about it? Yes, I am still working on it, although life has been busy of late and I've not been able to spend as much time on it as I would like. I got rather carried away with the research and at the moment I'm just categorising and indexing everything. It's a bit of an obsession - references to dew can be found in religion, alchemy, magic, philosophy, folklore, poetry, folksong, practically everywhere. It's a magnet to inspiration - as a symbol it is very pure and evocative. I don't think that the cultural meaning has changed significantly with either time or location - in many cultures the dew is a symbol of fertility, plenty, purity and divine gifts, for example: the 'manna' that the Jews survived on in the wilderness, the 'sweet dew' of nirvana in Buddhist teachings, the 'dew of Thy grace' in Christian prayers. It's also a symbol of transience, it is ethereal: present for a moment, shining gloriously, and then gone. I don't have a concrete theory yet as to why this is the case, all I can say is next time you see dew in the early morning sit a while and observe it yourself. Do you think this has similarities with the way you're making music? How important is the moment, the now, of inspiration and is there a point in trying to recreate it afterwards? Well, the place or the moment are obviously very important to the music, but they're not everything. The way I work is usually to record one track and sometimes a few overdubs in the field or at a designated moment and then work on it more later. I regard the tracks done 'in the field' as the seeds of the music - perhaps, and this might sound pretentions - but they feel like a sonic reflection of the potential in the places or timings involved, which I then try to tend and cultivate as best I can. Of course, the circumstances surrounding many of the recordings are often powerful enough to keep me inspired. I'll usually reflect on certain striking features in the land, the sky, local lore, inuitive feelings, and so on. As the environment is very important to your music I was wondering how you translate that in your live performances. Do you often play live? Live shows are a big problem. There are a lot of kind people who are very enthusiastic about what I'm doing and keen for me to bring it to a wider audience, so to speak. Obviously the major problems are that the music is conceived in pastoral areas or in a reflective state of mind - both things which you're not likely to find in a pub or club. Also I don't like imposing myself or my music on people - I'm sure people come to see bands for fun and I don't know if XETB is most people's idea of entertainment! Having said that I have played about three gigs with varying levels of success – usually improvising over a backing track with whatever instruments I can fit in my rucksack. I am actually just preparing to play a set at hornborough Free Festival next week. I'm trying to take gigs less seriously (I find them quite stressful!), leave my loftier aspirations at the door and just have fun. However, I don't think playing live will ever become a regular thing. You're obviously very into history and folklore: where did that fascination start? What is it that you like so much about the past? I’m not quite sure where the fascination started – although I suspect it has something to do with my father reading me HP Lovecraft tales as bedtime stories when I was a child. I suppose that Lovecraft’s tales are rich in local lore and landscape – in particular his story The Moon Bog caught my imagination. However, I only really started taking a serious interest in (mainly local) history and lore while recording the first XETB album – until that point I had been more preoccupied with Hermeticism, astrological magic and the magical philosophies of the Renaissance. All of which still play a large role in my life (I forgot to mention earlier that it was John Dee’s allusions to dew in the Hieroglyphic Monad that drew me to the subject). It was looking into local history and folklore that really made me feel like I’d “come home”. What I like so much about this kind of study is that it puts you into contact with the past and your are able to look at your environment in a much deeper way. Talking about hermeticism: are you familiar with the work of Frances Yates? She wrote some very interesting books about renaissance philosophy and magic... Yes, I really admire her work! She has come in for a bit of criticism in recent years because she perhaps overstated the importance of Hermeticism in the Renaissance and misread some sources, and so on. However, as far as raising awareness of the existence of this strain of thought in that period in an academic world that was until recently against considering 'magic' a subject worthy of study she did an amazing job! I particularly enjoyed her Art of Memory book. Giordano Bruno is of interest to me, as are mnemonic systems - in particular the 'emblem books,' which reduced moral teachings into striking images (a technique also used by alchemists to illustrate their works). The magical overtones of the Hermetic Art of Memory really inspire me - the idea that a mind which is imprinted with the magical images of the universe becomes a kind of talisman and returns the soul to it's divine origin is enchanting - folly, or not! How much of that history and past is 'real' or an image you create by yourself? Most of the inspiration or at least the impulse to record comes from ‘real’ things – for example Whirl Dub and Bogle Burn are both concerned with Long Lankin’s death, Blue Man in the Moss is the name of a standing stone, The Projection of John was recorded during a visit to Howden Minster during a time I was interested in local saints and so on. I’m very fond of the spurious histories and etymologies formulated by turn of the century folklorists and fairytale scholars – many of their ideas really lend a sense of enchantment to subjects in which the truth is more prosaic. Things that spring to mind are Robert Graves’ claim that Dionysus was the god of psychedelic mushrooms, or Laura Kready’s hint that Frog from the song Frog Went A-Courting (which actually an old English ballad, but more popular in America) is actually Apollo! I rarely invent my own folklore, but at times I do have rather vivid imaginings – the Landless Lord, the King of Swords and his son the Prince Occidental, although almost everything else has it’s seed in something ‘real’. At present I’m very interested in the characters of local hermits – people who were often eccentric, divine or a mixture of both. Were there any musicians in particular that made you pick up an instrument? Good question. I said that seeing the noise musician Dachise made me begin experimenting, but I suppose it was Syd Barrett’s solo albums that made me pick up a guitar. John Kirkpatrick made me want to try playing squeezebox instruments – I feel terrible saying that, since he’s a shining adept, while I’m total crap and just use it for playing wheezing drones! Anyone that influenced the music you're playing now? Well, It’s almost unavoidable that the XETB recordings are coloured by what I’m listening to, reading or thinking about at the time, despite often trying to play ‘no mind’ muic solely inspired by spirit of the place or by some kind of subtle intuitions. Artists that have probably influenced me are Ghost, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, early Cabaret Voltaire, The Third Ear Band and British folk like Stone Angel, Flibbertigibbet, Forest, Comus and Steeleye Span. Oh, and I almost forgot – Igor Wakhevitch is a major figure to me, his records are mindblowing! I’ve not even thought about authors like Robert Graves, Edmund Spenser, John Dee, Trithemius, Richard Rolle, Myrddin, Clark Ashton Smith, Kathrine Briggs’ monumental collections of folktales, S. Baring Gould, Edmund Bogg… I hear some echo's of ambient, folk, psych and drone in your music: are those genres that you're listening too? They’re all genres that I’ve listened to at some point. In particular I used to be a really big psych fan as a teenager – spending hours in incense filled rooms listening to Kaleidoscope and Jason Crest, while memorising the catalogue numbers of rare Deram singles. Folk has always been part of my life, since my parents were involved in the folk & blues scene and had a nice collection of records which I would occasionally steal. And yeah, drone – in particular Vibracathedral and Skullflower were real ear-openers to me. At present I’m mainly listening to early music, especially William Byrd and John Dowland. Also I’ve had a recent epiphany in the form of Arvo Pärt’s Annum per Annum – a spectacular piece of organ music! You’ve got some upcoming new releases on Larkfall by The Pneumatic Consort and JW Light? Could you talk a bit about those? The Pneumatic Consort was a one-off project that recorded a series of woodwind improvisations either side of Beltane. The sessions were inspired by a magical recipe in Reginald Scott's Discoverie of Witchcraft. Essentially the procedure begins as the kind of divination for hidden treasure that is common amongst the texts of the time. Many Elizabethans seemed to believe that the landscape was riddled with forgotten hordes (and perhaps it once was - there are accounts from the time of people ransacking prehistoric burial mounds) and it seems many were willing to risk their souls in order to find it by illicit magical means. Anyway, this particular spell takes a turn for the bizarre when half way through it seems to turn into an experiment to procure the services of the Queen of the Fairies! There's something psychedelic and phantasmagoric about it, and it's unusual in that it deals with Fairies, rather than Judeo-Christian angels and demons which is the norm for this kind of text. Johann Wlight used to run the Nid Nod label, but seems to have made the decision to become something of a hermit, distancing himself from the whole drone/noise 'scene'. He's released numerous discs which mix drone and field recordings to a melancholic and alienated effect. I think this release might be his last testament - it's certainly one of the most mournful things I've heard. You’re gonna release something on Phil Todd’s label: how did that happen? I got in touch with Phil Todd through seeing him at gigs in Leeds and seeing Ashtray Navigations perform every now and then. He's a real nice guy and insanely productive! One last question: could you tell us one of your favourite folktales? It would probably be The Dead Moon. It's one of those tales with various strange elements that perhaps hint at ancient beliefs and traditions. The Moon finds out that when she doesn't shine various evils bogles come out and it isn't safe to walk alone at night in the marshes, so she goes to investigate, wrapped in a cloak to conceal her light. Unfortunately she slips in to a pool the marshes and the branch of a submerged tree wraps around her keeping her underwater. The bogles then put a stone over the place where she was imprisoned to hid her light. Well, the people notice that the Moon is not increasing her light and a chosen group visit the wise woman who, using the divinatory technique of scrying in a bowl and a mirror finds out where the Moon is. She tells the chosen people that they enter the marsh with a stone in their mouths, carrying a hazel twig and not say a word. Then walk without fear until they find a coffin, a candle and a cross, at which point they will be near the Moon. They find a stone in across a pool that looks like a coffin, and the submerged tree that holds the Moon beneath the water with it's branches looks like a cross. Finally there is a will o' the wisp floating about the tree. They decide they have found the spot where the Moon is and move the stone, only to see the face of the Moon looking at them from beneath the water. They are blinded by her radiance and the next they know the Noon is in the sky, shining fully and making their way home safe from the bogles. It's a beautiful story, and various things fascinate me, such as the ritual items - the stone in the mouth (perhaps to enforce their vow of silence) and the hazle twig (a holy tree with a vast number of attendand superstitions, one of which being protection against evil spirits). One could ponder the meaning and origins of the tale for a long time.