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When KLOF reviewed the recent Laura J Martin, we touched on how her apprenticeship as a flute maker had enabled her to observe more closely the finer details of her instrument and her musical practice. This new perspective resulted in an album of precision, nuance and personality, and an almost zen-like connection between artist, instrument and material. London-based banjo player, instrument maker and Shovel Dance Collective member Jacken Elswyth embodies this interconnectedness better than anyone else. In her philosophy, the relationship between instrument, tune and performer is all-important, to the extent that her work as a builder of banjos is on the same continuum as her musical output: one would likely not exist as it does without the other.
This immersive relationship is evident across At Fargrounds, Elswyth’s third solo album. There are four live improvisations and eight traditional tunes, which implies that she has one foot in contemporary experimentalism and the other in the bygone realm of folk music. But this creates a dichotomy where one doesn’t exist. The reality is more complex, slipperier, perhaps more human: elements from each world bleed into each other, contemporary techniques snap at the heels of old songs, folk-adjacent melodies creep into avant-garde collages. On Coffin Maker, the improvisation that closes out the album, sensitive fingerpicking flutters over Mark Waters’ slow, loping bass, the whole thing feeling like a deconstruction of what has gone before, all the old and the new strung out into fleeting melodic pulses.
In all probability, there is no clear distinction between old and new and no line that can be drawn to differentiate one form from the other. The album explores these links from either side. Traditional tunes like the opener, Singing Birds/Jack Lattin, explore the quickness and celebratory nature of the banjo, while the drone that lies beneath it hints at a shift in context from the human to the elemental. There is even the suggestion, perhaps, that the banjo itself holds in its wood a shared folk memory. An instrument is created in order to make a specific sound, and that sound, or vestiges of it at the very least, can outlast the human who makes and plays it. In a sense, the instrument is a conduit between past and future; Elswyth understands this better than anyone.
The drone that underpins the improvised Warm Machinery feels almost like it grows out of the traditional track which precedes it, while another improvised piece, Waken Workshops, seems to splinter and split like refracted light. The remaining non-traditional track, Who Remembers, plays on the banjo’s ability to sound both nostalgic and spooky. It is bright but blurry-edged, a will-o’-the-wisp, a ghost ship of a tune emerging distorted and partly decayed through a mist of eerie fiddle scrapes. It seems a world away from the friendly nostalgia of the tuneful White Cockade/Big Sciota, but in reality, the pair could be two sides of the same mirror.
Lost Gander is an old, expansive tune that shifts back and forth between techniques and moods; in Elswyth’s adroit hands, it takes on the feel of a journey or the ebb of a conversation. The intricate Sugar Hill is addressed with briskness and clarity, and The Sussex Waltz is satisfyingly crunchy. A Fisherman’s Song For Attracting Seals/Full Rigged Ship is structured almost like a narrative, with Kate Gathercole’s fiddle playing more than a supporting role. Especially impressive is Falls Of Richmond/Squirrel Hunters, a pair of American banjo tunes which advance with a low-key menace intercut with a certain playfulness.
It doesn’t really matter whether Jacken Elswyth is a folk musician delving into contemporary techniques or an experimental improviser reaching back to traditional forms. Perhaps she is both, or neither, and the important thing is the music which she has shown can exist simultaneously in the past and in the future through the physical and symbolic body of the banjo. At Fargrounds is one of those albums that stops you in your tracks not once but twice: firstly, with the sheer excellence of Elswyth’s playing and then, if you dig a little deeper, with the breadth of its implications. This is instrumental music that has a lot to say, and it says it with verve, lightness and great skill.
At Fargrounds – Wrong Speed Records – 17th May 2024
Bandcamp (Vinyl/Digital): https://jackenelswyth.bandcamp.com/album/at-fargrounds
