For fans of: Lankum, Stick in the wheel, Cinderwell, Furrow Collective
Experimental dronefolk project Woodfolk will release its debut EP Oak on 7 June 2024 via Cuculi Records. Created by Bristol-based producer and filmmaker Luke Spurgeon, the EP features impressive guest collaborations with Martin Simpson, Lucy Farrell (Furrow Collective) and Claire Vine (Hands of the Heron). The six track EP is preceded by two singles, each accompanied by an original video created by Spurgeon.
Oak takes the listener on a winding, unpredictable journey through glitchy, ethereal electronic layers, broken open into moments of dark beauty and compelling storytelling. On ‘The Great Oak Tree’, folk legend Martin Simpson reads a verse from ‘The Girt Woak Tree That’s In the Dell’ by William Barnes, accompanied by hooting owls and fingerpicked guitar that evoke a mesmerising sense of campfire intimacy. There’s a tangible, personal quality to the whole EP, encapsulated by Spurgeon’s use of “everyday sounds – chopping kindling and throwing it into the basket, hitting my harmonium during recording. The bird song was recorded when I was camping in the woods. I put my recorder in a hollow in a tree and left it running all night.”
Another poem, ‘The Brave Old Oak’ by Henry Fothergill Chorley, is transformed by Claire Vine into a folksong melody that could be centuries old, with her voice split and blended in captivating harmonies. She also features on lead single ‘Before The Land Was Cleared’ (released 12 April). Above shuddering layers of harmonium, electric guitar & percussive sounds, Vine’s voice soars and then warps, looping over itself, as she laments the destruction of old forest.
Second single ‘Tiny Moss Valleys’ (due for release 10 May), contains the origin seed of the project. Spurgeon explains that “the idea for the EP began when I was walking in Wales and noticed the miniature world within an oak tree.” Lucy Farrell’s haunting voice takes us down into that world of ‘deep cut sylvan canyons… tight grass grooves, fallen acorn cups and steep dugout burrows’. Around her voice, layers of uncompromising drones build and then drop abruptly into a dreamy, Radiohead-esque sequence. Wordless, hypnotic closing track ‘Organic Delay’ is all crackling percussion and repetitive synths, like trees burning in soft rain, embodying the EP’s oscillation of hope and grief as it contemplates the stature and destruction of the incomparable oak tree.
Cuculi Records 