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Strangeness grows in strange ways. It percolates through geography and topography and history via unexpected routes. The Gog Magog Hills in Cambridgeshire occupy a hinterland between the strange and the mundane. A ridge of low and unassuming chalk hills to the south of Cambridge, their name suggests the influence of the folkloric giant, Gogmagog, discussed in 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. More recently, an entertaining piece of pseudohistory (Where Troy Once Stood, by Iman Jacob Wilkens, 1990) claimed the hills as the site of the ancient city of Troy.
The psychic centre of Gog Magog is Wandlebury Hill, home to an Iron Age ring fort and a whole host of legends. Musician, writer and ethnographer Ian Humberstone – here going by the name I.H – spent part of his youth exploring the slopes, and on the eighth volume of the Ceremonial Counties series, he gets the chance to revisit one of the weirdest and most enduring stories of the area, the myth of a ghostly warrior, the Goblin Knight of Wandlebury, who offers a duel or jousting contest to anyone who dares set foot within the perimeter of the hill fort after dark.
Humberstone’s offering gives the most literal interpretation of the subject matter so far in this series. It begins with a drone and some fervent, clattering background noise – the sound of mischief or fight or escape – before a long spoken-word section in which Humberstone recounts the tales of the phantom knight and his downfall at the hands of a brave baron. The second half is filled with ghostly noise: bells, weird zigzagging chirrups, a semi-rhythmic pattering somewhere between horses’ hooves and radio static, all of which contribute to a feverish, hallucinatory atmosphere. All in all, it’s the perfect example of how an academic approach to folklore can go hand in hand with an entertaining and sonically experimental musical practice.
Volume VIII’s second side is very different, musically speaking. Like Humberstone’s piece, Human Hand’s Edward Mordake does not shy away from experimentation, but that’s where the similarity ends. Human Hand are a doomy psych-rock trio from Lancashire and have been tasked with tackling Greater London’s entry into the Ceremonial Counties series. They do so with obvious glee, piling on fifteen minutes of head-spinning guitars, crashing drums and loose stoner noise, punctuated by the occasional moment of lacy delicacy. It turns out to be an ideal blend with which to mirror the strange case of Edward Mordake, the nineteenth-century English heir who was apparently born with a demonic parasitic face fused to the back of his own head. This second face was said to whisper hellish things to Mordake at night, and such was his distress that he resorted to suicide at the age of 23. Though thought to be apocryphal, Mordake’s case may have had its roots in reality: there are a number of rare conditions that could have caused such an abnormality.
Human Hand’s involvement in the series shows a willingness to embrace music from well outside the folk tradition. It’s an acknowledgement that folklore, particularly in its oddest and most uncanny forms, is not just the preserve of a closed shop of traditional musicians but can be interpreted by anyone and in any way, and it makes for one of the most exciting and challenging instalments yet.
Note on the Series: Each tape can be collected individually each month or as one entire subscription and they are available via Folklore Tapes direct at www.folkloretapes.co.uk or via their Bandcamp at https://folkloretapes.bandcamp.com/ and via selected independent record shops.
