This album was the first recording of Medieval Music I ever heard (borrowed from my history teacher and mentor John Reeve). This pioneering band (from 1967) is hilariously rough and ready, improvised and (obviously) done in a single take - in a pretty convincing recreation of how things might actually have sounded IRL. You will hear why I call it Hobbit music - due to the rasping intermittent drone of the longest instrument depicted on the cover. I can just imagine the rustics at The Green Dragon Inn, Bywater falling-about with laughter while dancing to this Estampie.
This was one of my favourite early music recordings when I first discovered the genre. In fact, it is one of only two cassette tapes I still possess, the other being An Elizabeth Evening by the same group, also very good in a rough and ready way. In fact, I see it's now called in its iTunes incarnation A Bawdy Elizabethan Evening in Merrie Old England which sounds crass but is quite accurate.
ReplyDelete