Banjo With The Sound Of Its Own Making, by Jacken Elswyth

Banjo With The Sound Of Its Own Making

by Jacken Elswyth

supported by

Harsh Agarwal We are often so taken by the sounds of an instrument that we forget that the instrument itself is a labour of love. Jacken gives equal agency to her skill as an instrument builder and gives us incredible insight into the harsh sounds of instrument making that usually predates the beautiful sounds of the instrument. This time only fused together, and with a healthy dose of electronic experimentation.

Ned Milligan This seems so conceptually whole and successful as an album I want to listen to repeatedly. Really impressive.

Andrew Norton, Night Folk in the Afternoon thumbnail

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

£3 GBP or more
Cassette + Digital Album
Pro-duplicated yellow cassettes with printed card & labels.

Includes unlimited streaming of Banjo With The Sound Of Its Own Making via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 5 days

edition of 80

£6.50 GBP or more
edition of wooden forms: oak, cherry, walnut - Jacken Elswyth
Twelve wooden forms approximately the size of a cassette box. Each piece is made from banjo-offcuts, worked and oiled on 5 of 6 sides. Each handmade object is individually numbered.

Also available here: jackenelswyth.bandcamp.com

"At the end of the project I returned to the workbench, fishing from the scrap bin discarded pieces of oak, cherry, and walnut from this and other builds. These were collected together to make 12 forms, from which 12 blocks the size and shape of a cassette box could be cut. The cover art shows these scraps arranged and assembled ready for the blocks to be shaped. The blocks themselves have been smoothed and oiled on all sides but one, to reveal the work in their creation."

Includes unlimited streaming of Banjo With The Sound Of Its Own Making via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Set Up 04:40	buy track
2.	Sawing 05:44	buy track
3.	Lull 1 04:52	buy track
4.	Cumberland Gap 02:13	buy track
5.	Planing 05:13	buy track
6.	Lull 2 03:54	buy track
7.	Lost Gander 02:51	buy track
8.	Shaping 05:34	buy track

about

Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder.

In her music making she is focused on exploring traditional tunes, developing extrapolations on folk styles and techniques, and investigating drone, ambience, and improvisation within and beyond folk music. She organises the Betwixt & Between tape series as one avenue of these investigations, and compiles occasional Almagest mixes as another. She plays and records solo and in collaboration - chiefly with Shovel Dance Collective.

She also builds and repairs banjos and other instruments, with a focus on folk craft and vernacular styles. This practice and these instruments inform and facilitate her music making.

"This tape is the result of an on-off project of the last year and a half, begun as I started to build my first mountain banjo at the end of 2019 and continued through lockdowns in 2020 / early 2021."

"Fretless, gut or nylon strung, and made out of readily available materials, the mountain banjo is a return towards the banjo's gourd-bodied roots developed by people who had played modern open-back high tension instruments but couldn't afford their own. Like the cigar box guitar, it's a folk appropriation and approximation of a mass-market instrument, firmly in lineage with the instruments that preceded that market. This mountain banjo was built of oak, cherry, walnut, bone, calfskin, and pvc, following instructions detailed in the third Foxfire experimental education / Appalachian ethnography collection."

"The initial source sound was recorded throughout the banjo build over winter 2019/20 - all the sawing, shaping, and sanding captured with only a vague plan for use. As lockdowns began in spring 2020 I took additional recordings in the garden, on breaks from the workbench in the garage. At the end of the build these recordings were grouped, manipulated, and arranged to provide the basis for the album. As I got to know the instrument I recorded improvisations in response to these tracks, adding the two traditional tunes to showcase a more straightforwardly folk playing of this folk instrument."

"At the end of the project I returned to the workbench, fishing from the scrap bin discarded pieces of oak, cherry, and walnut from this and other builds. These were collected together to form 12 forms, from which 12 blocks the size and shape of a cassette box could be cut. The cover art shows these scraps arranged and assembled ready for the blocks to be shaped. The blocks themselves have been smoothed and oiled on all sides but one, to reveal the work in their creation."

credits

released November 5, 2021

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Fractal Meat Cuts London, UK

Processes & experiments in sound & music.
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Label & radio show run by Graham Dunning

fractalmeat.wordpress.com

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