Free Folk

Back in Aug. I read an article in The Wire on some weird scene called 'free folk.' The artists interviewed talked about surrendering their ego to the music and references were made to a rural form of free and raga. Needless to say, I was intruigied. Thoughts filled my head of free form folk jams. Jam grass if the players took the risk of moving away from pop structure and moved into more free form territory. I picked up albums from Scorces and Sun Burned Hand of the Man as soon as I had the money to spare.

What I got was not what I expected. Both albums had a defenit Indian influence. With form and structure taking a back seat to sound the feel. The music drifted through the mind. In Scorces case, it never materialized into any kind of traditional western structure. Sun Burned Hand, played with structure now and then, but drifted away into other ideas before anything ran the risk of being expected.

At first, neither album grabbed me. There was nothing for me to hold onto. And I figured that the albums would be shelved until a later date, when I was prepared to 'get it.'

But, this wasn't the case. Both albums, the Scorces album esspecially, acted on a subconcious level and I found myself putting the albums on again and again. When it came time to place another order with Eclipse, I picked up Tower Recordings and Jackie-O Motherfucker in an attempt to better understand this strange music.

I am still at a loss. On a purely concious level this music holds nothing for me at the moment. On a subconcious level though, this music haunts me. Snatches of sound run through my mind. And the draw to listen to this music is reoccuring. Its like a slow addiction. You don't realize what is happening, until it has taken over your life, and consumed you body and soul.

My next order with Eclipse next month will include more free folk albums. May be some Dread Foole, probably more Scorces, Sun Burned Hand, and may be Tower Recordings. It will probably make up the majority of the order, instead of the Japanese psych stuff that has been the mainstay so far. And it will not be the last order I place with Eclipse.

I find myself reaching to describe the hold this music has on me. I feel stupid listening to this music. Not that it is cerebral, since it obviously isn't. But, I feel that it is working on a level that years of pop structured music has hidden from me. It is the musical equivilent of zen. I must unlearn all I know, so that I can truely comprehend all that I thought I knew.