★Amgen
Creiriau Y Delyn Rawn / Relics Of The Horsehair Harp
"This collection is a companion piece to my solo album ‘Telyn Rawn’ AMGEN 001 (2020). I have invited some of my favourite musicians to respond to the eighteen improvised pieces on ‘Telyn Rawn’. I asked each contributor to imagine that the musical material improvised in 2020 was an ancient musical form that had fully existed in the medieval period, and, that each of their responses were to have happened centuries after the imagined formation of the ‘Telyn Rawn’ pieces. This album therefore propos…
Telyn Wrachïod
Cildraeth Sienco is an improvisation based on an amalgamation of the notation and structure of Angharad Jenkins’ Brandy Cove with the alternative string tuning of ‘Cywair yn Nghywair y Wrach’ from Robert ap Huw’s manuscript."Ceimion wrachïod cymwysYn siarad bob teimlad twys""Precise, angled braysSpeaking every profound feeling."From a cywydd requesting a harp by Huw Machno fl. 1560-1637
Dyslexic Harp (Deciphered In The Dark)
Amgen presents Jean-Luc Guionnet's Dyslexic Harp (Deciphered In The Dark). Concert for pedal harp solo.
Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by Jean-Luc Guionnet. Recorded 17th and 18th of January 2010 at q-02, Brussels
Trem
Amgen presents Rhodri Davies's Trem.
Live at All Angels, St Michael and All Angels Church, West London.
For Simon H. Fell
Amgen presents Rhodri Davies's For Simon H. Fell. Concert harp.
Recorded 26th of June 2020.Mastered by Sam Grant.
Dwa Dni
*In process of stocking* Amgen presents Rhodri Davies's Dwa Dni. Titles borrowed from the works of Lisa Jarnot, Ed Luker, Nathaniel Mackey, Redell Olsen, Sun Ra, Nisha Ramayya, Sarah Riggs and Leslie Scalapino. Telyn clun MOGIC / MOGIC lap harp.
An Air Swept Clean Of All Distance
Making up 1 part of 4 to his ‘Pedlar’ boxset, ‘An Air Swept Clean of All Distance’ was recorded in 2014 at Blank Studios, Newcastle, and exec produced by folk chief Richard Dawson, and adorned by a continuing series of artwork by Anna Peaker. It skips back along the timeline to what sounds like happy times, where Davies’ playing fizzes with typically inventive, optimistic, and timeless beauty, which, if you shut your eyes and try a little, could almost hail from any point in the past half millen…
Wound Response
Another piece of the puzzle to his 4-part ‘Pedlar’ boxset, this one was thrown down in 2011 at Newcastle’s legendary Morden Tower, a C.13th, grade-listed turret on the West Walls of the city’s ancient defences against curious Mackems and Durham scunners, that was also previously and notably site of seminal recordings by The New Blockaders, a.o. In that vein, Davies gets raw to the bone in ‘Wound Response’, using Lap harp fed thru transducer, read by contact microphone, and pushed to seething lim…
Telyn Rawn
Dating back to the 13th century in Wales, the Telyn Rawn is a nearly forgotten horsehair harp; UK improvising harpist Rhodri Davies researched the instrument and its unique sound, commissioning the construction of a harp on which he performs 18 improvisations of impressive technique and sonority, launching his new Amgen Records label with this album named for the instrument.
"A Telyn Rawn is a harp strung with horse hair and predates the appearance of the triple, lever and pedal harps. The earli…