MANCHESTER FOLK HORROR VII

By some quirk of fate or destiny, we have arrived at the Seventh instalment of the Manchester Folk Horror Festival. Each year we try to approach that innocuous compound from a fresh angle. Indeed, last year’s journey took us to the threshold of where we stand now, upon the edge of a precipice. The number seven means magic and trouble. It is right then, that we focus upon the age old myth of the Grail…let’s turn to the dictionary:

1
Capitalised: the cup or platter used according to medieval legend by Christ at the Last Supper and thereafter the object of knightly quests
2
: the object of an extended or difficult quest

So far so good. The notion that the Grail was used by Christ at the Last Supper is but one truth in a panoply of myths fading into the mists of time. Nevertheless it is a potent enough image to serve as the goal of perhaps the greatest of quests.

We live in dark times, facing down existential destruction from a bewildering array of angles. What solution is there to be found, short of accepting our fate and rejoicing into the dark, until the last fire has burnt out?

Perhaps none. But what if the horror came not from the last dance, but from the possibility that there might be a greater call to a heavy responsibility? What if merely sitting back and watching as the world falls into night, is not our destiny? What if we are called to set out into that night in search of…something; in search of something unknowable and unprovable?

This edition of the Manchester Folk Horror explores this idea. It is not a call to activism. It is a call to head forth into the utter unknown, with nothing so much as one’s soul at stake.

As ever, art allows us to examine this notion safely, as if through a long distance telescope. In a quest filled with symbols, music remains our most potent ally and most revealing lens. The date will be February 1st, 2025. The location will be, as ever, The Peer Hat. We offer this event up to the Goddess Herself. (so that she might see that we are trying.)

GNOD’s legend, of a Salford collective emerging from the lives of desperate individuals; from a host of musical backgrounds; forming something like a singularity of sound; a sonic point of massive gravity; is one well know to locals. Indeed, it is a legend that has seem them receive unanimous global and critical renown. They will be closing Folk Horror VII in what might be seen as the final sonic act of our micro epic. An irresistible banishment.

This year’s guest speaker, is none other than JOHN MATTHEWS. Once described as ‘Oxford’s answer to all things mythic’, John has been a professional independent scholar since 1980. He has made a lifetime study of the legends of King Arthur, and more recently of the history of piracy. His list of publications totals over 100, including Pirates (Athenaeum) which was a number one New York Times best seller for 22 weeks and was translated into 18 languages. He has acted as an advisor on several big budget movies, including King Arthur, Pirates of the Caribbean and Prince of Persia. His work on the education DVD to accompany King Arthur won a BAFTA award in 2003.
His best known and most widely read works are ‘Pirates’ (Carlton/ Athenaeum),  ‘The Grail, Quest for Eternal Life’ (Thames & Hudson, 1981) ‘The Winter Solstice’ (Quest Books, 1999) which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for that year, and ‘The Wildwood Tarot’ which has sold over half a million copies worldwide and is the second best-selling tarot of all time.. His book ‘Celtic Warrior Chiefs’ was a New York Public Library recommended title for young people, and the more recent ‘Arthur of Albion’ won a Gold Medal from NAPPA, a gold Moonbeams award and a BIB Golden Apple Award.

His love of Tarot and divination began when he devised the best-selling Arthurian Tarot, with Caitlin Matthews in the 1980s. It has sold in the region of 150,000 copies world-wide and had been though three editions. Since then he has worked on and devised a number of successful decks including, The Wildwood Tarot (with Mark Ryan) The Shaman’s Oracle and The Camelot Oracle, The Lost Tarot of Nostradamus, The Steampunk Tarot: Gods of the Machine  (with Caitlin Matthews and Wil Kinghan), The Sherlock Holmes Tarot and The Oracle of Dr John Dee. His latest adventuress in Tarot include The Cather Tarot (with Wil Kinghan), The Byzantine Tarot with Cilla Conway, and The Tarot of Light and Shadow with Andrea Aste.
Oxford, UK.

John’s most recent works include a study of the Temples of the Grail, a new approach to tarot in The Fool’s New Journey, and the stunningly illustrated Goblin Market Tarot. He is currently working on Realms of Arthur the second of a two-volume set of books retelling the little known myths of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table illustrated by John Howe, key illustrator of the Lord of the Rings books and films.

The most experimental aspect of the day will be found in a special live rendition of GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT in all of its, yes, three hour immensity (there will be an intermission, naturally). Expect an epic yet also simple, mystical humble and hypnotic performance of an almost altogether similarly epic poem. One of only a few great epics of the English language.

Written in the High Medieval period, in in a local North West Midlands dialect of Middle English, in a largely. alliterative verse form more commonly accosted with the earlier Anglo Saxon period by an unknown poet and rendered into Modern English by local lad and poet laureate Simon Armitage. Mysterious in both origin and nature; it weaves together English, Welsh and Irish mythology, the French chivalric tradition, both Christian and pagan tropes and fantastically realistic imagery from the natural world, our very own, local to us, Peak District, in particular, all to truly spellbinding effect.

Performed by Salford Media City leader and local historian, DAVID JACKSON, alongside guitar maestro, DBH.

BEN MCILROY The first of our artists who were down to play last year, but were ultimately foiled by unpredictable events. “In genre and form alike, McElroy is ambiguous, operating at the margins of several genres and thereby creating a sound that’s truly his own. In a world with no shortage of ambient records, McElroy’s musical worldview encompasses ambient but isn’t constrained by it. Instead, he is fluent in ambient, drone and folk, and he combines them masterfully. He is comfortable in the language of fingerpicked guitar and bowed strings, but he can also create wobbly, pulsating drones to go with them. ”

WOODEN TAPES were denied playing last year due to cruel and unusual destiny. However, 2025 sees this circumstance rectified. In May 2023, musician and writer, Tim Maycox’s Wooden Tape project delivered the album ‘Music From Another Place’ … a timeless collection of music that recalls pastoral lands, summer months and folk rituals.
Having played in various bands, supporting acts such as Teeth of the Sea and Mainliner and playing Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, Tim has recently turned his attention to writing a set of pieces based on his memories of children’s television themes coupled with flashes of acid folk and classic OST music of the 1970’s & 80’s. Sonically the album is awash with picked acoustic guitars, percussive adornments, warm synth pads and organ. The titles themselves, suggest lost soundtracks or memories of forgotten TV themes.

M-ORCHESTRA We welcome the Fortean electronica of London-based musician Martin Belam. Consciously navigating that rich seam of the uncanny; the almost documentary surrealism of the pre-Folk Horror genre 70s, M-Orchestra is a welcome bout of what one might accurately label ‘hauntronic’, using various media to form a cut-up snapshot of another, perhaps truer reality. Damned facts indeed.

SISTER MONICA is the patron saint of married women; difficult marriages; disappointing children; victims of adultery or unfaithfulness; victims of (verbal) abuse; and conversion of relatives. Also alcoholics. A movement beyond spectacle into a liminal sonic territory from artist, Anne Louise Kershaw.

FUTURES WE LOST invokes a dark post-industrial, cinematic techno soundscape. Future visions collide with crumbling mills amidst the industrial scars of the northern English landscape. Sometimes a brutalist techno monolith to this mechanised slavery nightmare, sometimes a dark ambient soundtrack to the distortion and living death of our dreams. A sonic memorial to all those futures we lost.

CHELSEA HARE returns for this seventh festival. An artist of prodigious skill and talent, his music explores genuinely unknown territories, married to the clever melody and harmony. His mediations on this years theme, promise to be revelatory. (The man is as modest as they come and would hate me saying that. Nevertheless.)

ELLA KAY is an electro acoustic composer and sound artist. Focusing on fixed media acousmatic works, her work explore the intricacies of sound and humanity through a variety of auditory experiences. Moving, uncanny and occasionally terrifying. This is art that exalts in the indulgent luxury of the sonic everyday.

GARY FISHER is an artist and improviser who’s work primarily explores sound through objects, actions, ideas, words and places. He has made performances, installations and interventions in concert halls, galleries, public spaces, living rooms and on live radio as well as producing many recorded and visual pieces.

THE MANIFESTATION GROUP have been compared to a host of artists, Love; Broadcast and Syd Barrett amongst them. The duo of Haya Moon and Nick Alexander emphasise an approach that demands the removal of the artist, as much as possible, from the intent of the song, recognising an agency in art and music that is extra-human. Each song is an ambassador from an different place, with the pair acting as hosts for the guests. Since I am in The Manifestation Group, I will attempt to follow my own advice and get out of the way.

£17