Serpentyne
Album: Myths And Muses
Label: Serpentyne
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.serpentyne.com

From Gryphon back in the 70s through to Blackmore's Night and Medieval Babes, there's long been a strain folk music that has embraced the music of mediaeval England and, frequently, the myriad of pagan, arcane and sacred imagery associated with it. Led by the soaring vocals of Maggie-Beth Sand and with instrumentation that includes bouzouki, cittern, hurdy-gurdy, didgeridoo, piccolo and flute, London-based six piece Serpentyne are the latest to mind this rich past, their particular twist being that, where Gryphon incorporated classical textures and Blackmore melds with rock, they look to club and dance music, nodding in parts to the likes of Ozric Tentacles, in much the same way (though not sound) as Celtic fusionists Shooglenifty approach Scottish traditional folk.

For this, their second album, the 'Medieval-World-Folk-Rock' outfit have taken a sort of concept approach in that the songs, a mix of self-penned and the traditional, are about women warriors and muses, often sounding like soundtracks to Robin Of Sherwood or, more currently, Game of Thrones alike. Case in point being album opener, Boudicca, a beats-driven tribute to the Celtic queen of the Iceni who took on the Roman invaders that marries a courtly Renaissance dance feel to electronics and a military marching percussion. Assuming it's got nothing to do with Michael Zammit's book The Queen of Heavens, the night nine minute second track, Alexandria, departs from the thematic template in that it's not about a woman at all, but rather the fabled city founded in Ancient Egypt around 331 and, as alluded to in the lyrics, the capital of Hellenistic Egypt. Appropriately enough, hurdy-gurdy gives the track has a very definite eastern flavour with the instrumental sections being traditional Turkish, often evoking the sound of bazaars, though, unfortunately, equally often calling to mind the music hall Egyptian dance caricature.

Things are more clubby on the six minute Valkyries (the only number to have any background info in the booklet), a whirling dance number featuring clattering drums, djembe and choral vocals, while the Latin chant Gaudete will, of course, be familiar from Steeleye Span, though this version also incorporates shimmering Northern African rhythms. There's some more Latin (a mediaeval Catholic chant, apparently) on the equally snakelike rhythms of Hymn To Cynthia, woven into a lyric adapted from Ben Jonson's poem Cynthia the Huntress, itself drawing on the Roman myth of Diana.

At this point my lessons in history and English Lit desert me, so I have no idea to whom if anyone Je Vivroie Liement, a 14th century tune composed by Guillaume de Machaut and translating as I Should Lead A Happy Life, refers, but it clumps along nicely on a bed of smallpipes and French bagpipes. Machaut gets another credit with Douce Dame Jolie, also sung in French, which, introduced with didgeridoo drone and flute (or is it piccolo?), incorporates a modern arrangement of traditional Breton dance.

I'm on familiar ground again for Freya's Firedance, a rousing instrumental based on mediaeval dance The Scots Brawle and named for the Norse goddess while A Rosebud In June is an arrangement of the traditional English song collected by Cecil Sharpe and, again, previously recorded by Steeleye Span, the interwoven multi-voices giving way to a lengthy instrumental stretch with fiddle, cittern and driving circular drum pattern.

When not bedding or beheading, Henry VIII was fond of penning the occasional tune, one of which turns up here in the shape of Pastyme With Good Company (intermixed with mediaeval dance Des Oge), though it's fair to say he probably never envisaged the New Orderish feel and snare drum arrangement into which it's been rather ungainly forced rather like a corset. It's a minor slip in an otherwise inventive collection that rounds off with Sand and Powell's Les Garcons de Montagne, a wheezing original instrumental spotlighting Ian Claburn on French bagpipes and is well worth digging out for more than just your Summer Solstice barbecue.

Mike Davies