Earthen lullabies, with guest tracks by Layla Legard/ Hawthonn, Ceylan Hay/ Bell Lungs, Mark S. Williamson/ Spaceship, Ecka Mordecai, and Drew Mulholland.

This 17-track tape release springs from a strange medieval English riddle, the Harley lyric Erthe toc of erthe (Ms. Harley 2553). The tiny lament or puzzle is impossible to translate, since in its four short lines the word earth appears twelve times. Like ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, these identical words have different meanings – transitioning between soil, world, burial, cultivation, decay, earthly possessions, and our own bodies. The device of repeating earth so many times in such a short space creates an unsolvable lyric which, riddle-like, ‘only makes sense when we are prepared to hold several meanings of the word in our minds simultaneously’ (Gillian Rudd). How does one sing this tiny piece, or give it a tune?

This is an album of sonic variants, settings, and radio covers of Erthe toc of erthe, including by invited guest artists and friends. The modified field recordings, chants, twilight hums, nonsense riddles and layered repetitions are each inspired by the variant meanings of ‘earth’, in the ultimate group sonic field trip.

Cutler’s recordings were made in Lud’s Church, a naturally resonant mossy chasm (or “grene chapel of meschaunce”) in Staffordshire where Lollard ceremonies were held, including their alternative death chants. Combining guitar, voice, processed electronics, record hiss, and field recordings, these tracks. and the album as a whole, are each titled with phrases from the dictionary definitions of ‘earth’. Some of these meanings are undigestible by each other, whether scientific, metaphorical, or allegorical: e.g., the ground as a surface on which humans and animals move; the inhabitants of the world collectively; ‘earthing’ a conductive electrical circuit or terminal; to ‘go to earth’ meaning to take refuge as in an animal’s lair or burrow. Combining this mix of opposites – doom and refuge, sin and innocence – and playing on the end of the world-ness of elegy, this camper-van tape release becomes a sort of muted lullaby for earth itself.

Sounds include: 78 rpm hiss, voice, guitar, field recording, kodak slide carousel, and lullabies. Also: dulcitone (ceylan hay / bell lungs), synth and whisper (mark williamson / spaceship), evening walk hum (ecka mordecai), synth drone (layla legard), hob moor birds (drew mulhulland).

Reference from Gillian Rudd, Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval English Literature (2007). All artwork on the printed tape and packaging by Crow Versus Crow based and Lud’s Chapel photographs by Amy Cutler. Digital download and limited edition artist’s cassette releasing 14th May 2021.

Artist:

Dr. Amy Cutler is a geographer, musician, and filmmaker who is inspired by the history of landscapes as dream visions or “phantasmagoria”. Her self-taught sonic approaches draw on experimental fieldtrips as much as on her instruments, ranging from strings and lullabies to field recordings, voice, and post-processing, as well as de-composed or unspooled found sound. Her first tape release was Örö Tape (Fieldtrips of the Damned) (Fractal Meat Cuts, 2020), exploring pathetic fallacy, isolation, and sci-fi, based on a month’s winter residency under the military radar on an uninhabited Finnish island. This was followed by GUTTER (Misophonia Records, 2021), a rainy lockdown album based on histories of atmospheric experimentation, recorded in London and Pendle Hill. She has also released albums based on metallurgy, earth, and sea-change (Forgerons et Alchimistes, 2020), and the sounds of science and specimens (PILOTS, 2020). Her most recent composition was LULL, an interactive ambisonics surround-sound installation for Amoenus, which used ultra-sonar sensing to manipulate the perspectives and horizons of nature contemplation and its “recitals” – from howls to lullabies – according to the actions of visitors to the space.

She is currently an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths University, where she teaches audio-visual composition and philosophies of the nonhuman. Her writing and research activism – including her work on fossils, elegies, archives, and mourning – underpins all her music releases, which together explore sonic illuminations of nostalgia for the earth, from 1970s geography trips to contemporary extinction grief.

Additional Credits:

Layla Legard: Voice loop / drone. Layla is known for her work with geographical lore and landscape. As one half of the Leeds-based duo Hawthonn, she experiments with forms of ‘audio scrying’ combining folk and electronic instruments and haunting vocals. Her work often refers to local practices and paganism.

Ceylan Hay: Voice / Dulcitone. Ceylan is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and community musician from Scotland, who frequently collaborates with theatre-makers, dancers, artists, writers and scientists. She performs solo under the name “Bell Lungs”. 

Ecka Mordecai: Voice/ hum. Based in London, Ecka is a sound performer and composer working with themes of feeling, being and becoming. She is predominantly known for her work with the cello, but also uses voice, movement, and eggshells. 

Mark S. Williamson: Voice / field recordings / instrumentation. Based in West Yorkshire and recording under his own name and as Spaceship, musician and filmmaker Mark S. Williamson specialises in landscape specific instrumental music. 

Drew Mulholland: manipulated electronics and field recordings (Hob Moor). Drew is a composer in residence for both the Astronomy and Physics department and the Geographical and Earth Sciences department in Glasgow. His works for the Geography department have included 'Geographia Mundi', a suite in three movements evoking cartographers and explorers, with one section sung in Latin and another based on magickal symbols from Reginald Scot's The Discovery of Witchcraft, while 'Stella Nova' composed for the Astro-Physics department centred on the "nebular hypothesis" and the belief that stars evolved from space dust.