Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music

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The book then takes you a chronological journey through the movements, and performers in those movements, from the rural based artists such as Vashti Bunyan and Shirley Collins, to the industrial based, like Ewan MacColl, to the mystical balladeers like Mr. The poet-printmaker William Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Aleister Crowley, the modernist composers of British orchestral music, like Ralph Vaughn Williams, the folk-jazz fusionist John Martyn – they’re all in on it. Rob Young's ambitious Electric Eden presents a flip side to the well-known story of the evolution of electric rock in Britain in the 1960s, a story of the rediscovery of England's native folk music in the early 20th century by the likes of William Morris and Cecil Sharp, who went from town to town recording and notating the music that would hold great sway with those musicians who became associated with England's less loud, more earthy music--the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Davy Graham, The Incredible String Band, Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, John Martyn, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake, and many others would each deploy traditional folk music to their own ends in various recombinant ways, writing new songs laced with the idealism of the exploding sixties youth culture, while paying homage to the spirit and traditions of old.

Far from the stark and no doubt rather wholemealy songbook of 1951, these will be versions that draw on the more recent arrangements of the folk-rock era, by the likes of Pentangle, Shirley Collins, etc – illustrating how far folk music in the British Isles has moved since the war. Focusing on Bert Jansch, Shirley Collins, The Watersons, John and Beverly Martyn, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Mr. This is a rare gem of a book: a beautifully-written, passionately-argued history – and defence – of British folk music from its origins in the pastoral socialism of William Morris and classical composers Holst, Vaughan Williams and Delius, through to Kate Bush, Julian Cope and Talk Talk in the 1980s.

Throughout Electric Eden, Young's sympathies lie with the eccentrics and the iconoclasts rather than the purists, which is why Donovan and the even more hippy-dippy Vashti Bunyan are accorded as much importance as the Copper Family or the Watersons.

Fox, Richard and Linda Thompson, and countless others, I read the book listening to the Bunyan, Martyn, Shirley Collins and the Watersons, Bert Jansch, and Bob and Carole Pegg for the first time – duly informed and pleased to so be. It’s a very detailed account of the interlinked fortunes of these artists and groups at a transitional point in rock history (see Jon Savage’s compilation of a few years back, Meridian 70 ), and the author has already tackled the twin biography of Tim and Jeff Buckley and the story of Sonic Youth.William Morris, David Munrow, Nick Drake, Robin Williamson, Maiden Castle, Stonehenge, Tinhenge, Woodhenge, Woolhenge, David Sylvian and Julian Cope right back to the very first druid who drugged himself into the very fist blissful stupor and then got eaten by something unspeakable. The other is 'May the Long Time Sun Shine upon You', a Sikh farewell blessing used in kundalini yoga. Young wants us to accept that his theme is not a specific genre but visionary musical landscapes in general. He is the author of Rough Trade and Warp, and the editor of Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music and The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music. Young tries out quite a few, including quasi-fiction ("The battered Austin, its 50 years clearly legible in rust and mud flecks .

I can just about accept that Kate Bush at her dippiest might be channelling the old weird Albion of early pagan folk songs, but the electronic soundscapes of Coil or Psychic TV are as far from folk music as it is possible to go. I’ll be referring to it a lot as I make my way through my now much-expanded list of albums to listen to. I ve already made several precious musical discoveries thanks to this book and I expect to make more. In this groundbreaking survey of more than a century of music-making in the British Isles, Rob Young investigates how the idea of folk has been handed down and transformed by successive generations. What [folk music] emerges as, in this impassioned and infectious rallying cry of a book, is a musical tradition that is about so much more than morris dancing and a determination to hold onto the past.By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Electric Eden is expansive, exhaustive, enlightening yet an eminently readable examination of English folk music: its origins and development.

In his coverage of leftwing balladeers such as Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Young does acknowledge British folk as a voice of anti-authoritarian protest but, as the 1960s advance, he dismisses them as irrelevances "holding their breath until the revolution came". Rob Young really has gone the extra mile in putting together a book that is very high on detail whilst retaining a very readable style. Electric Eden is some kind of achievement which may be best taken in small 50 page doses and not eaten whole like I did. It charts their complex relationship, their fluctuating fortunes, musical peak, and the politics and ideologies that provoked their split, illuminating why they were not just extraordinary musicians, but also natural mystics. I’m hosting a panel around Simon Reynolds’s new book, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Obsession with Its Own Past , at London ICA this week.We encounter William Morris's hatred of industrial society, Cecil Sharp bowdlerising the songs he collected, Ewan MacColl's earnest, communist critics' group, the "getting it together in the country" of Traffic, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Led Zeppelin. People with that sort of collector's anal mind-set are not really the kind of people who should bother to read this amazing book.