Common Dance

Andy is appearing this weekend in Common Dance, a piece by choreographer Rosemary Lee, at Greenwich Dance Agency. He plays the part of a piper, mysteriously calling in the different parts of the piece (so no change there). Tickets are selling fast, so act swiftly if you're interested.

The New Album!

We're happy to announce that the new album is finished and will be released on November 26th (available from our website, CD Baby, and the usual download outlets). It's called An English Arcanum and contains eleven original track of darkly crafted folk. We're pretty chuffed with it, I have to say.

It comes packaged with some stunning artwork by the wonderful Rima Staines, and to whet your appetite, here's the front cover. We'll keep you posted about gigs etc, though as you know, we're lying low while Josie adjusts to being a mother!

More soon,

Andy xxx

Shindig Magazine

Lovers of all things psych, prog, esoteric, wyrrd and folky could do worse than check out Shindig Magazine, available in all good shops etc etc. I love their dedication to a musical cause that I thought had long been crushed beneath the wheels of a bland, coke-driven, narcissistic music-industry juggernaut. There's a fantastic cover-mount CD of current groovster bands and and article about medieval psych-pixies, Circulus (with the band photo to end all band photos) plus lots lots more.

Check it out - join the Shindig revolution!

Andy xxx

Spank Review

This review of Untie the Wind just in from the good folk at Heathen Harvest - not sure about the Beatles comparison, but we're happy someone really gets it.

BTW, we're in the studio today, mastering the new album. Expect an announcement soon. Excited? Damn right we are.

Andy xxx

Rima and Tui

Like many people out there, I think I suffer from a kind of temporal disphoria, the feeling that I belong in another time. Well, there are a few delights to being in the modern world, one of which is the interweb, without which we would never have found Rima Staines, the wonderful artist who designed the cover for Untie the Wind. Believe it or not, during that entire collaboration we never physically met. I found Rima, by accident, on myspace, and we did everything by phone and email. Such is the modern world.

But just this week, while on my summer holiday ramblings through the SW, I caught up with Rima, and her fella, Tui, in a sheep field not far from Chagford. Tui is an artist in his own right, making exquisitely crafted music on his laptop, under the name Orla Wren. They live in a beautifully converted, magic truck, all filled with puppets and clocks and feathers and stones and things. It's like sitting in a fairy tale. We drank tea, ate copious biscuits and chatted for hours about art and music and lifestyles and, you know, this and that. Very hard to leave and come back to the city (how DO we put up with street lights that turn the sky the colour of Mars?).

Both Rima and Tui, being the peripatetic hermits that they are, are notoriously camera-shy, but I managed to catch a shot of them in their delightful home, which manages to solve the dilemma of how to belong in the here and now, when all the while you'd rather be back then...

Oh, and did we say? Rima is currently working on the artwork for the new Bees album...

Andy xxx

Kit Williams and the Golden Hare

Like many people of my generation, I've been a long-term fan of the artist Kit Williams, ever since his treasure hunt, Masquerade. I've spent many happy hours gazing at his pictures (published in The Bee on the Comb, Out of One Eye and Engines of Ingenuity). His work is delightfully English, pastoral but with a dark puckish streak running through it. Always there is the sense of a riddle or a secret, just out of reach, that, if only one had the key, would unravel marvellously.

Well, last summer I was lucky enough to meet Kit Williams and to view his current collection. To cut a long story short, my partner ended up modelling for him, and we were both invited to take part in the forthcoming BBC 4 documentary, The Man Behind Masquerade. Here are some photos to give you an idea of what to expect!

We were also lucky enough to have been invited to the preview of his retrospective in London, which, in true Kit Williams style, lasted just one day. I must confess that it was rather full of London arty types - not grubby folkies at all - and we were just on the point of leaving when, lo and behold, a plinth was wheeled in, on top of which was a perspex box, covered in a cloth.

Surely, no? We looked at each other in amazement, hardly daring to speak.

And then, yes! There it was! The Masquerade Golden Hare! It's whereabouts have been unknown for the last twenty years since it was bought by an anomymous buyer. Quite quite extraordinary to see it, something I've dreamed about since I was a child. And, quite possibly, the only time it will be put on public view. I feel very blessed.

And, here's a conincidence, the opening track of the forthcoming Bees album is called, Saddle the Hare, which is partly inspired by one of the pictures in Masquerade. Nice how things turn out.

Andy xxx

Bees News

Dear Bee Friends, here's the latest news from Hive central:

1) New album to be released in mid-November
As you probably know by now we are taking some time off from gigging so that Josie can have her baby (who is due to put in an appearance sometime soon!). However, when they've all had time to land we'll be back in November with a new album! We've just been mixing it and are very pleased with the results - eleven tracks of darkly crafted folk, continuing from where 'Untie the Wind' left off. Watch this space for details of the title and track listing, and a sneak preview of the album cover.

2) Your help needed in viral marketing
(No - nothing to do with swine flu...) We're currently taking bookings for 2010 and we're asking our fans for help in promoting us! We have a wish list of festivals we'd like to play next year (including Bearded Theory, Moseley, Green Man, Glastonbury, Secret Garden, Beautiful Days, Shrewsbury etc etc). Many of them have internet forums or places where fans can suggest bands they ought to book. So what we're asking is, if there's somewhere you'd like us play, maybe you could set up a thread on just such a forum, or drop the organiser an email, or even just blog a review of our album or our live gig - anything really to generate a 'buzz' (aaarrgghh - dreadful word, dreadful pun, but you know what we mean). The more chatter there is, the less likely we are to have our promos chucked in the bin with a 'Telling the who?'. Any help is very appreciated (it's the fans what duzz it) so thank you in advance.

Catch you in the autumn!

Telling the Bees xxx