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Robin Williamson: The Iron Stone

£12.69

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Label: ECM

Cat No: 9876441

Barcode: 0602498764411

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Artists

Robin Williamson (vocals, Celtic harp, Mohan vina, Chinese flute, whistles, Tabwrdd drum)
Mat Maneri (viola, Hardanger fiddle)
Barre Phillips (double bass)
Ale Moller (mandola, accordion, shawm, clarino, natural flutes, drone flutes, whistles, jaw harps)

Artists

About

‘The title track comes from Williamson’s years with the Incredible String Band but the mood on his third album for ECM is, like the austere cover landscape, the antithesis of hippy summer. Flitting between roles as storyteller, folk traditionalist, bard and experimental musician, Williamson offers up wintry meditations on mortality. The doomy Scots ballad ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ is here, along with Celtic harp settings for poems by Raleigh and Wyatt and a Betjemanesque reflection on early days. Set to inventive acoustic arrangements … it’s an album of flinty integrity from an old master.’ - Neil Spencer, The Observer

‘The Iron Stone finds nature out of tune with itself, man thrown against its iron hard landscapes alone, puny, cold. This, in Williamson’s own words is ‘wonderful and grim music’. Familiar traditional tunes like ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ are recast in coarse tunings, contemporary visions like ‘Political Lies’ are bitter, and even the love songs like ‘Verses At Ellesmere’ are the cries of a drowning man gripping tight the life raft. Moments of redemption are rare but the more striking for their scarcity … Grim but wonderful indeed.’ - Andy Robson, Jazzwise

Tracklisting:

1. The Climber

2. Sir Patrick Spens

3. Wyatt’s Song of Reproach

4. There Is A Music

5 Even Such Is Time

6 The Iron Stone

7. The Badger

8. Political Lies

9. The Yellow Snake

10. Loftus Jones

11. Bacchus