STACK #191 Sep 2020

MUSIC FEATURE

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Hen Ogledd’s brilliant melee of talent which also includes Dawn Bothwell on glock, synth and drum machine, Sally Pilkington on synth, keyboard and pipe organ, and Davies’ fellow co-founder Richard Dawson on bass. Together, their ideas traverse climate change, philosophy, natural history, a nine-foot marsh-dwelling fellow named Paul, and so much more. They’re all vocalists, and they all contribute ideas. “We all have different approaches,” Davies says. “I find myself somewhere in between [offering fully-formed songs and songs with room for improvisation], because, despite years of working with improvised and experimental music, Richard enjoys goading me into writing

INTERVIEW

RHODRI DAVIES HEN OGLEDD

Free Humans by Hen Ogledd is out Sep 25 via Domino.

Harpist Rhodri Davies talks the experiment-soaked but pop-positioned elixir that is Hen Ogledd's astonishing second album, Free Humans. Words Zoë Radas

a ‘proper’ song and of course I feel compelled to prove to him that I can do it!” He acknowdlges that “alternative approaches to time” (as Dawson has described it) is “a thread that weaves through [their] music", and he offers a remarkable example in the gorgeous afore-mentioned track Remains .“ I looked into the history of the Vocoder, mainly because it is a much maligned device [see: autotune] and I had an inkling there was more to it.” He was right. “It actually has a fascinating history, and was developed by Homer Dudley in 1928 to synthesise human speech at Bell Labs. It was introduced to the public at the 1939-1940 NewYork World’s Fair with the Voder (or Voice Operating Demonstrator) saying the words “Good afternoon, radio audience.” We used this speech at the beginning and end of the song. I like this voice

W hen it comes to plumbing the idea of non-linear time, aural uroboros four-piece Hen Ogledd leave Rustin Cole in the dirt. The first clue that the experimental alt-pop outfit are into messing with the traditional idea of chronology is their bandname; it’s the Old North word for a region encompassing southern Scotland and Northern England between 500 and 800 AD. Second comes the fact co- founder Rhodri Davies is a harpist – a wildly free-improvisational, interested in destruction- and-creation installations, but nonetheless harp-playing harpist. It’s an instrument which has a seemingly solidified role in traditional music, but from early on, Davies saw that as a challenge. “I was certainly bored by the standard harp repertoire that I encountered when young, and that propelled me into looking for alternative ways of playing the harp,” the Abertawe (Wales)

Hen Ogledd, clockwise from top left: Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson, Sally Pilkington.

album from Hen Ogledd, after 2018’s widely acclaimed Mogic – emerges in many guises: its sweetly inquisitive electric patter meanders through button-cute single Trouble , and it ripples in the meat of the enormous build- up towards the end of Remains . It’s part of

from the past, which was at the time a futuristic phenomenon, appearing on a song today. A way of squashing time…” ZKR

musician says, adding that he found the history of experimentation with the instrument was “largely an untapped treasure trove,” despite Alice Coltrane, Zeena Parkins and Anne Le Baron breaking ground before himself. The harp on Free Humans – the second

Read the full interview @ stack.com.au

A fter the stripped-back indie folk of 2015’s Carrie and Lowell , Sufjan Stevens returns to a primarily experimental palette of sounds on his eighth studio album The Ascension . The hallmarks of Stevens’ 20-year career remain as impactful as ever, with rich atmospherics and his delicate voice underscoring the album’s 15 tracks. Songs on the record slowly transform into grand moments, Stevens layering synths and his vocals to grand heights before surrendering to a frenzy of noise. Thematically, the album reconciles with his existence and the importance of love, obscuring detail for sweeping statements. The result is Stevens at his most dazzling and profound. Holly Pereira SUFJAN ASCENDS

The Ascension by Sufjan Stevens is out now via Asthmatic Kitty/Inertia.

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