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Banish Air From Air

by Ben Walker

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dgcirkus
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dgcirkus Great selection of poems and verse to create anew! This blears boundaries, from early folk to electronic tinged acoustic escapes. Ben 's guitar work continues to bring on the smiles. Favorite track: Neptune.
Martin Willcox
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Martin Willcox If there is going to be a better album released in 2023, I can’t wait to hear it. “Banish Air From Air” is a brilliant piece of work. Each of the 11 tracks offer something different and there is not a ‘skipper’ amongst them. The guest vocalists are perfect and the other musicians contributions cannot be underestimated. Congratulations Ben, that was 3 years very well spent! Favorite track: Starlings.
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1.
Banish Air from Air - Divide Light if you dare - They'll meet While Cubes in a Drop Or Pellets of Shape Fit - Films cannot annul Odors return whole Force Flame And with a Blonde push Over your impotence Flits Steam.
2.
Starlings 03:48
3.
They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a path through the woods Before they planted the trees: It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ring’d pools Where the otter whistles his mate (They fear not men in the woods Because they see so few), You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet And the swish of a skirt in the dew Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods, But there is no road through the woods.
4.
When the old Kings of Cumbria ruled this land Four brothers usurped their father’s command Each knew himself worthy, noble and just Each hated the other, for greed and blood-lust. They fought and died on the forest floor Condemned as wraiths for ever more To scream their rage to the restless night To clash cold iron in jealous fight. The blood-red berries, the ghostly shapes Those fraternal four The yews of Borrowdale stand guard over the grassless floor Four trees were planted, each for one The roots sank deep among the bones The woods once echoing with rage Fell still, now silent for an age. For the roots hold the bones of the brothers apart The berries, the blood from the eldest’s heart The leaves, the poison from the youngest’s wound Their curse, kept close in in the cold, cold ground
5.
Seventeen hours at sea, westerly bound from Rye As we wait alone, My lugger and me, naught but eggshells on the line I saw her down by the quay, her dark smile turned my eye For the night alone. My lugger and me, naught but eggshells on the line Dawn broke, I was trimming the sheet. Offering her no fond goodbye As we left her alone, My lugger and me, naught but eggshells on the line. And now I hear her coming for me, I can hear her scream in the rise Of the wind... My lugger and me, naught but eggshells on the line. The wind will howl and the ropes will crack, and I will stand firm with the mast at my back Get you down, I'll curse at the gale, get you down, I'll spit at the tide And she'll drag me down low To feast on my bones, naught but eggshells on the line.
6.
Neptune 04:49
7.
King Storm was sat up on a dark mountain cloud, In his arm was strength and his voice was loud; When he spoke to the winds they rush’d to his call, And woe to the land where its echo might fall. At his call the dark pine bow’d his head to the ground, And the rivers rush’d wild o’er the bright flowered mound; When he laugh’d in his rage youth bent his form, ‘Ha ha, do you know me now?’ cried bold King Storm. The bark, in his pride, sailed over the dark main, Ah, when will they see Earth’s bright valleys again? King Storm from his throne sends his voice o’er the deep, And the doom’d fated Crew, now eternally sleep. ‘Hark, many thousands speed round my dark throne, The ocean’s my element, his sceptre my own; The earth struck to dust, the world bends his form ‘Ha ha I’m the master now’, cries bold King Storm.
8.
9.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild-plum trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone.
10.
11.
The perfect chord had already been played Six billion years before we learned to hear. Mercury in treble, Saturn, bass And Earth and Venus mellow, low and clear. Like a mote of dust in the morning sky. The perfect concord of the spheres suspends Their ceaseless orbiting in space and time. So men, they say, made music to pretend A million lifetimes in that moment’s chime. But others say we might still hear the sun A hundred million miles away from here Calling back his kin as space expands; A note too deep and slow for human ear.

about

This album came out of trying to make sense of a world that seems upside down. It’s a very human instinct to try to put a justifying narrative to the chaos - we’ve got hypotheses which go back centuries, from folk myths to religion, from alchemy to science. I love the satisfaction of peeling back the layers of a folk tale and finding that, in its own way, the story still makes sense.

I started to play with developing a few of the folk stories I was reading into lyrics to work with musically, and found that I rather liked a couple of them. With everything that’s been going on in the world, it’s taken me nearly three years to make this album, but I hope it’s better for the extra time spent thinking, testing, trying a few things.

I’ve worked with some wonderful artists for this record. It’s a privilege to make music with such generous people, so incredibly good at what they do. I really enjoyed making it, so I hope it speaks to you too.

credits

released February 24, 2023

Music by Ben Walker

Track 1: Emily Dickinson
Track 3: Rudyard Kipling
Track 7: trad. Roud v7001
Track 9: Sara Teasdale

Anna Jenkins: Violin/Viola
Basia Bartz: Violin
Jo Silverston: Cello
John Parker: Double Bass
Nancy Kerr: Fiddle
Tom Wright: Drums

Jo Silverston recorded by Ben Capp in Bristol.
Anna Jenkins recorded by Matt Nasir in Stroud.
Tom Wright and Nancy Kerr recorded at Powered Flight Music in Sheffield.

All other recording and mixing by Ben Walker in Brighton.
Mastered by Nick Watson @ Fluid Mastering
Published by SGO Music

Artwork: Entropy by Justin van Genderen

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Ben Walker Brighton, UK

With his work recognised as 'deft' (Telegraph), ‘stunning’ (The Guardian) and ‘second to none’ (Verity Sharp), Ben Walker has built a reputation among his peers for fusing tradition and innovation like no-one else.

In between producing and playing for other artists, Ben's characteristically warm, whimsical and virtuosic solo set delights folk audiences and festivals in the UK and further afield.
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