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To start with: Wrackline is a stunning and complete work of art, put together with great care and skill and performed with Hield’s distinctive magic.


The album begins with a spell of transformation. ‘I shall go into a hare,’ she sings, channelling the spirit of seventeenth-century witch Isobel Gowdie. But it is no whimsical flight of fancy, no children’s game: Gowdie’s plight was real, and her case unique in the history of British witchcraft. She claimed to have danced with the Queen of Elphame, bedded the devil, turned into a jackdaw. Her confessions are still pored over by scholars of the history of the occult, and yet there is still no consensus on the exact causes of her actions. It has been posited that she suffered from a form of psychosis, or that ergot poisoning was to blame, or that she was suffering from a kind of post-traumatic disorder precipitated by sexual abuse. And neither was fate documented, although historians believe that she would most likely have been sentenced to death and executed by burning and strangulation.

Gowdie’s case sheds light on the historical treatment of women, and of people suffering from mental illnesses. Her spells and chants, which were written down during her trial, show that she had an extraordinary imagination and a rare talent for words, but they have a contemporary relevance too: many of them speak of escape of flight, hinting at oppression that still exists in some quarters of society.

There are few artists better placed to tell Gowdie’s story than Fay Hield, who has a PhD and is a lecturer in ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield. She was also a member of a cappella group The Witches of Elswick, whose interpretations of some of the darker songs in the British tradition featured a number of strong and striking female characters. Hare Spell, Wrackline’s first track, is astonishing even by Hield’s standards. It is thrilling and incantatory, its arrangement both spine-tingling and extremely clever, and the whole thing is propelled along by her band’s voice and instruments featuring Rob Harbron, Sam Sweeney, Ben Nicholls and Ewan MacPherson.

The rest of the album proceeds along similarly impressive lines. Thematically, Hield is concerned with all things weird and dark, the edgelands between history, myth and magic. Her own songs – her first efforts at songwriting – give a voice to the people dwelling in those edgelands. Jenny Wren is a kind of feminist riposte to the traditional ballad Cruel Mother (a song which is also included on this album) in which the difficulties of childbirth are acknowledged. Hield accompanies her singing – which is both impassioned and precise – with a nimble banjo tune. It is hard to believe that she has never recorded her own songs before.



Tracklist: 
01 Hare Spell
02 Jenny Wren
03 Night Journey
04 Swirling Eddies
05 Call the Storm
06 Cruel Mother
07 Old Grey Goose
08 Sir Launfal
09 Pig Song
10 Sweet William's Ghost
11 Wing Flash
12 When She Comes

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“Muziek is kunst en kunst moet voor iedereen bereikbaar zijn, anders is het elitair.”