The Quickening by Spiral Dance

The core work of this album started life as an idea several years ago when Adrienne talked of making an album featuring songs based on the cycle of the seasons. The continuous sequence of the sabbats – Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Spring Equinox, Beltane, Midsummer, Lughnasadha and Autumn Equinox – can be depicted as an eight-spoke wheel, where each spoke marks an important moment of solar progression and therefore change on Earth. The Celts recognised both days and years as beginning with the dark part such that the evening marked the beginning of a new day and likewise the winter season marked the year’s beginning. We wanted to maintain the Celtic tradition and start our song cycle with a song for Samhain, honouring the ancient origins of the Wheel of the Year that stand firmly in the northern hemisphere, despite following our Australian aspect where the sabbats are essentially reversed and therefore celebrated on opposite dates of the year to better reflect their seasonal meaning.
We decided to use our Samhain song, ‘Holly Lord’ and ‘Into the Green’ for Vernal Equinox on this album, both of which were recorded on Spiral Dance’s first CD from 1996 entitled “Woman of the Earth”, as the songs capture the spirit of their season so well. ‘Weaving the Summer’ from the 1999 album called “Magick” was written for Beltane and inspired by May Day morning in Hastings, Sussex in the company of the Morris dancers and Jack in the Greens – if you listen carefully I swear you can hear “the ring of the Morris bells”! To complete the cycle, five new songs were written. The Midsummer song came first, foundered upon an old English fertility custom described by Janet and Colin Bord in their book “Earth Rites”. In order to become fertile, young women would crawl through fissured megalith, common in Southern England, called a ‘Tolven Stone’. Nick found a tune called “Eireann” from Afro Celt Sound Systems second album that he loved, so he borrowed part of it for our instrumental arrangement. Our Yule song, ‘Solstice Evergreen’ came from a vision of the classic Victorian winter scene; a small agricultural village green covered in snow, oak and elm hung with haw frost, people skating on the frozen stream and the glow of the hearth through a thatched cottage window. A decorative evergreen tree, so familiar to us all today, acted as a reminder that life lay dormant in the stark, frozen landscape.

The spark of new life that reveals the coming of Spring and greets the festival of Imbolc seemed to us to be the most positive energy for our song cycle and should perhaps act as the title track for the album. Brigid, Celtic Goddess of fertility, is synonymous with Springtime so Adrienne drew on her to convey that switch from bare limb to bud burst. That transfer of energy at the moment an entity becomes possessed with life is known as ‘The Quickening’. The lyrics had an odd scan but they fitted so well to a tune by Basque accordion player Kepa Junkera, called “Bok-Espok”, meaning (I’m told by Kepa himself!) “Maybe or maybe not”, so we used it. When we took the song to the studio, Kevin had a fantastic time arranging the percussion layers to capture the excitement of Imbolc and the exhilaration of the quickening.

Experiences gained from our tour to the United States have inspired several songs for this album. Adrienne’s song for the Autumnal Equinox congers up imagery of warm, dusty Australian afternoons and cool, still nights with the first sign of falling leaves from some of our non-native deciduous trees, but the title came from friends we met at a trailer park in Florida during our tour of the United States. Gypsy and Dee were bikers and they tried to portray the sensation of freedom they had whilst riding their Harley. Like those falling autumnal leaves, their description was to ‘Ride the Wind’. Standing on stage at the Council for Magical Arts Festival near Austin, Texas in front of thousands of people on a perfect Samhain night, under a full moon that seemed magnified to double its normal diameter was a magical moment that I’m sure none of the band will ever forget – I know some of us had a tear in our eye! One of the CMA organizers pointed out that we were witnessing a Harvest Moon. These words, plus a verse from a 19th Century Thanksgiving hymn by Henry Alford, learned from the singing of Maddy Prior, later inspired ‘Harvest Song’. It was after several large margaritas at an RV park adjacent to the Johnson Space Center in Houston that the tune ‘Grackle Cackle’ was penned. The Grackle is a native bird of the southern United States and has a habit of cackling incredibly loudly at dawn as it leaves its roost in the pecan groves. This is a somewhat rude awakening for six touring musicians that only got to bed a few hours earlier! For this recording we’ve added it to another of my tunes called ‘Beltane Waltz’. The first threads of ‘Voodoo Bayou’ started to take shape as we travelled along River Road with the levy on one side and the plantation houses and American Oak trees entangled with Spanish moss on the other. Tragically, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have destroyed some of the places we visited, especially in and around New Orleans and those along the Mississippi River and we dedicate this song to those people who suffered in the wake of the storms and to those who continue to struggle and pick up the pieces of their shattered communities.

‘Here be Giants’ is a song based on a story from a book of Cornish legends. It also reminds us of our own pageant Giant of the Hills (GOTH), made for the memory of our friend Helen “Petal” Lyons and often paraded, accompanied by the obstreperous guisers, at various Ales and festivals. We’ve tacked on a tune called ‘Baroch’ taken from the wonderful “Cirque du Soleil”, as it sounds to us so much like a giant walking purposefully across an ancient land. ‘Wayland’s Steel’ tells the story of a skilful blacksmith whose magical forge was said to be near the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire. As an interesting link, Brigid the fertility goddess in ‘The Quickening’ is also the goddess of metal-smiths! And keen-eared listeners amongst you might just notice the theme tune to a popular folk and roots music radio show weaved into this song…now how did that happen? We’ve recorded a couple of covers on this album too; ‘The Oak’ was composed by Steve Knightley, one half of the English folk duo “Show of Hands” for the “Theatre of Heart” production “Beaminster’s Oak”, with a wonderful chorus written by Kim O’Loughlin. ‘Tarry Trousers’ is a traditional Irish song learned from German folk-rock band “Tears for Bears” and it is more or less their arrangement too, with just a hint of the Spiral Dance treatment for good measure.

With a combination of haunting vocals, intoxicating guitar riffs and groovy accordion lines, underpinned with potent bass and dynamic percussion, Spiral Dance presents an eclectic blend of traditional folk-rock with powerful self-penned songs and tunes. Rousing melodies intertwine with tales of Magick, myth and legend - music that will rock your ancestors!

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