At Green Man 2007 Paul said he'd seen an act called Directing Hand play the Café Stage — the rest of us were elsewhere at the time — and it had been quite an experience. Here's a short clip of the performance he saw.
So when Guy, Annie and I went to see the late Jack Rose (RIP) in Brixton in March last year, we made sure we got there in time to see the support acts, including Directing Hand. For reasons that may not be immediately obvious from the video, I was smitten on several levels. I may explain more fully what I mean by that another day; or maybe I won't. But one factor was remembering that I'd seen Alex Neilson — half of Directing Hand that night — doing a guest vocal with Alasdair Roberts six months previously.
At the end I went to the merchandise table to buy whatever was available, and what was available was this limited edition LP. I remember playing it the following weekend, and absolutely loving it. I left it out on top of my minidisc player as a reminder to play it again. But then I didn't — partly because I ended up putting other records on top of it (The Room's album is still there from last June); also because some things have a rare beauty best maintained by keeping them rare.
Listening again after 21 months, the songs seem much more familiar despite the lack of listening. Probably because I have been listening to a lot of the other work of the members of Directing Hand, as Trembling Bells
I just came across this interesting review by Ed Pinsent, which observes,
One thing the record is trying to do is discover and expose 'parallels' between experimental noise, improvisation, and traditional folk music, a project Mr Neilson has been engaged with for some time. I personally have yet to be completely convinced about this line of thinking…
I'm not particularly bothered about being convinced, as long as the racket sounds as joyous as this, but it does seem that the two strands remain parallel, rather than combined, on this record. The spin on the tradition is certainly interesting. Mr Pinsent refers to an "idiosyncratic and doom-laden version of Child Ballad 13 Edward" while David Keenan's insert/sleeve note says the heart of the album is the "three versions of traditional folk songs that deal with the myth of resurrection: My Son David, Two Brothers and What Put the Blood." When does a traditional song get adapted and passed on in a different form that becomes so established that it counts as a different song? I don't know if anyone can say, but I know I can't. Nevertheless, all three 'songs' mentioned by Keenan have a connection to Edward. My Son David and What Put the Blood are Child Ballad 13. Directing Hand's The Two Brothers, Child Ballad 49, is unsurprisingly quite similar to Alasdair Roberts' version (though I haven't listened to both back-to-back) and focuses just on the dialogue between the brothers as one lies dying. Other versions include a kind of sequel element where the surviving brother is questioned about the blood on his shirt and attempts to evade the truth of his brother's death before confessing it, and this part is essentially a re-telling of Edward.
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