Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is an acclaimed history of the evolution of British folk music. Author Rob Young has a fascination with the roots of English folk music and its ties to the British countryside. For the most part the book "is a surefooted guide to the various tangled paths the English folk song has since been taken down by classicists, collectors, revivalists, iconoclasts, pagans, psychedelic visionaries, punks and purists."
The book is in some ways a search for the national psyche which Young notes has been shaped by a "wrestling for possession between competing religious doctrines, heathen, pagan and Christian." Young finds more of interest in folk-rock which is heathen or pagan but, interestingly, he does value the work of Bill Fay, the Biblical references which abound in C.O.B's Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, and also includes a brief survey of '70's Jesus Music noting that "there were a few groups - After the Fire, Caedmon, Canaan, Cloud, Bryn Haworth, Meet Jesus Music, Narnia, Nutshell, Parchment, Presence, Reynard, Trinity Folk, Water into Wine Band and 11.59 - which managed to make a music that has lasting value, a kind of Eucharistic-progressive sound that sits comfortably with the better acid folk of the period." He highlights, as being of particular interest, Caedmon's self-titled 1978 album, the Water into Wine band's Hill Climbing for Beginners, Bob and Carole Pegg's And Now It Is So Early with Sydney Carter, Carter's A Folk Passion, and the Reflection Records compilation Sounds of Salvation.
Young acknowledges that set against "the Dada venom of punk, the angular edges of post-punk and new wave and the plastic seductions of New Romanticism," the "irrelevant, parlous state of folk music in the late 1970s" was revealed. From this point on the book loses focus as Young indulges his liking for Kate Bush, David Sylvian, Talk Talk and Julian Cope without (except in the case of Cope) demonstrating their links to what has gone before. In doing so, Young overlooks the links between punk's political attack and folk's role as the voice of the common people; a connection that Billy Bragg clearly recognised and utilised.
More recently, Young was one of those interviewed along with Bragg, for Get Folked: The Great Folk Revival which takes up the story Young told and explores the current resurgence in folk's popularity:
"Something incredible has been happening in the music scene over the last few years. Folk - a musical tradition with roots in the pre-electric world - is now becoming the new 21st-century pop phenomenon. Is it the antidote to manufactured music, the new punk, or simply evidence of the enduring appeal of this age-old musical form? This programme features first-hand testimony and intimate, specially shot musical performances from a cross-generational cast of legends, new and old. Richard Thompson, The Lumineers, Jake Bugg, Frank Turner, Akala, Donovan, Martin Carthy, The Unthanks, Alt-J, Newton Faulkner, Seth Lakeman, Bob Geldof and Ade Edmondson are among the contributors."
In introducing the new Folk Revival, the programme references visually the influence of Communion artists including Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling. Although not included in the documentary per se, some of these artists, such as Mumford and Sons and Michael Kiwanuka, continue to tap the Christian influence which, as Young notes in Electric Eden, can be found as a strand within English folk music.
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C.O.B. - Martha And Mary.
The book is in some ways a search for the national psyche which Young notes has been shaped by a "wrestling for possession between competing religious doctrines, heathen, pagan and Christian." Young finds more of interest in folk-rock which is heathen or pagan but, interestingly, he does value the work of Bill Fay, the Biblical references which abound in C.O.B's Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, and also includes a brief survey of '70's Jesus Music noting that "there were a few groups - After the Fire, Caedmon, Canaan, Cloud, Bryn Haworth, Meet Jesus Music, Narnia, Nutshell, Parchment, Presence, Reynard, Trinity Folk, Water into Wine Band and 11.59 - which managed to make a music that has lasting value, a kind of Eucharistic-progressive sound that sits comfortably with the better acid folk of the period." He highlights, as being of particular interest, Caedmon's self-titled 1978 album, the Water into Wine band's Hill Climbing for Beginners, Bob and Carole Pegg's And Now It Is So Early with Sydney Carter, Carter's A Folk Passion, and the Reflection Records compilation Sounds of Salvation.
Young acknowledges that set against "the Dada venom of punk, the angular edges of post-punk and new wave and the plastic seductions of New Romanticism," the "irrelevant, parlous state of folk music in the late 1970s" was revealed. From this point on the book loses focus as Young indulges his liking for Kate Bush, David Sylvian, Talk Talk and Julian Cope without (except in the case of Cope) demonstrating their links to what has gone before. In doing so, Young overlooks the links between punk's political attack and folk's role as the voice of the common people; a connection that Billy Bragg clearly recognised and utilised.
More recently, Young was one of those interviewed along with Bragg, for Get Folked: The Great Folk Revival which takes up the story Young told and explores the current resurgence in folk's popularity:
"Something incredible has been happening in the music scene over the last few years. Folk - a musical tradition with roots in the pre-electric world - is now becoming the new 21st-century pop phenomenon. Is it the antidote to manufactured music, the new punk, or simply evidence of the enduring appeal of this age-old musical form? This programme features first-hand testimony and intimate, specially shot musical performances from a cross-generational cast of legends, new and old. Richard Thompson, The Lumineers, Jake Bugg, Frank Turner, Akala, Donovan, Martin Carthy, The Unthanks, Alt-J, Newton Faulkner, Seth Lakeman, Bob Geldof and Ade Edmondson are among the contributors."
In introducing the new Folk Revival, the programme references visually the influence of Communion artists including Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling. Although not included in the documentary per se, some of these artists, such as Mumford and Sons and Michael Kiwanuka, continue to tap the Christian influence which, as Young notes in Electric Eden, can be found as a strand within English folk music.
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C.O.B. - Martha And Mary.
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