London-via-Bridport fundraising party and beyond
Dancing in a circle is an ancient tradition common to many cultures for marking special occasions, strengthening community and encouraging togetherness. The dance can also be enjoyed as an uplifting group experience or as part of a meditation. Four times a year we throw Circle Dance parties, with films, DJs and live music in-the-round, to fundraise for radical campaigns and causes.
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Siwan [SHOO-wan] is a Welsh harpist, folk musician, and regular performer at Circle Dance parties. Singing traditional and self-written pieces in both Welsh and English, she finds in the folk songbook not cosy nostalgia or otherworldly whimsy but hope for a radical future. Produced by our own Muckers, her debut release captures the spontaneity and authenticity of Siwan’s live performances, supported by subtle synth and wind arrangements from our in-house band.
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Kate Huggett is a singer and composer living in East Anglia. This group of tracks, three by Kate, one by Hildegard of Bingen, are about the power of really old feminized voices, and bonds of magic, in the water and on the shore: birthing practices, singing in monastery gardens, unwritten knowledge, bodies in and out of comfort. The first track, ‘Kinderly is me rising and me falling’, was written for the film Gossip (dir. Hannah Renton 2023) and was the inspiration for making this EP.
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Muckers says, ‘Like the KLF on a Krautrock combine crunching through the English countryside in search of a chugged-up and dubbed-out dance, I wanted to use this release to make some optimistic electronic music. I hope both mixes of Happy Go Mucky have a playfulness grin to match their punning title. On the B side Bog Nos brings some flecks of psy to play as a slippery melody in a world of echo sidewinds over a one-drop rhythm, while Highway (Nite Mix) slows things down with On-U-inflected percussion and an array of murky acidic textures.’
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Muckers says, ‘Landscape is important to my work, and this release really started to take shape following a series of long walks over Colmers Hill and through the passage of Hell Lane, both of which are a stone’s throw from where I grew up in Bridport. The dreamlike, jubilant atmosphere also draws inspiration from dancing in the third bardo at numerous All Our Friends and Beauty and the Beat parties, cycling among the cumbia-loving barbecuers of Burgess Park, the Peter Greenaway film Drowning By Numbers, Peter Zummo, Ash Ra, Agnès Varda and a lean period of employment’.
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Muckers says, ‘I was interested in making a midwinter record, digging into the spookiness of the countryside at this time of year, with its strange rituals and odd beauty. I drew on my experiences growing up in the rural West Country to express some of the weirdness of this time of year, especially when night falls. But I also know that deep winter is and always has been time for a party – so I wanted to include some tracks to make you dance. Finally, we know that after the harshness of winter comes the promise of spring – both literally and figuratively – so we end on music that looks purposefully forward to new horizons.’
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Acid Camping is a short audio essay about land, family, trespass and belonging that remixes and recontextualizes the music on the Dingly Dell EP. Recorded while out walking, Acid Camping considers who owns the landscape, the methods by which people have been driven off the land, and how we can dissolve the boundaries within ourselves. It draws on ideas from Nick Hayes, Richard King, Jodi Dean and the podcast #ACFM, which Muckers co-produces. Thanks to Amber Husain and Thom Andrewes for editorial advice on the text.
Muckers says, ‘these four tunes were all made during the first lockdown in Spring 2020. There was so much beautiful sunshine, with nature coming into bloom, but we were stuck inside. I made this music whilst remembering the joy of partying outside with friends, and the particular weirdness of rural life in the West Country.’
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Our friends at Spiral (Joe Wilson and Josh Homer) have put together a video for our recent release, Muckers’ ‘A New Loving (Gentle Mix)’. The film finds our young producer, somewhere in a field in England, setting off on a journey. A journey of unknown length, undertaken by both young and old: he’s going to a rave. Join Muckers on his search for the bass bins as he makes friends along the way and learns a lesson or two in life.
Circle Dance host a monthly show on London radio station Loose.fm. Two hours of bass-bin bothering, chill-out room chugging, consciousness-raising, lysergically-laced psychedelic music from across time and space.
Circle Dance’s Muckers presents an hour of pastoral psychedelic music for a high-summer daybreak stumble through the fields and woodlands of the West Country from party to bed. With the bass-bins still ringing in our ears and our vision slightly blurred, we journey along paths and lanes toward home, the dawn chorus in full voice and sunlight spilling through the leaves, encountering an array of forest fellow-travellers as we go. Tune in, drop out!
