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Side1:
- Hello Sunshine 9:55
- Cadan 0:56
- Arloedhes An Lydn 4:13
- Hope Comes with Love 6:51
Side2:
- Delivered Hope 7:11
- Song Of The Lady 2:15
- Sorrow goes 4:37
- Darallow 1:26
- Tonight 5:26
Side 3:
- Step Backwards 3:43
- The Fisherman 4:41
- The Dream 7:36
- The Sun Came Up again 5:32
Side 4:
- The Light 2:00
- Alone Again 6:08
- Worlds apart 3:22
- Morwenna and the Lamb 7:29
Side 5:
- Dygoweth 4:33
- Tales 1:28
- This is how It’s Always Been 5:38
- Or Without You 5:29
Analogue Trash Radio (verified owner) –
"Another one to add to the Albums of the Year list….excellent groundbreaking music
The Arts Desk (verified owner) –
"Hanterhir have struck their own seam of sound and The Saving of Cadan is their masterwork… This is rock music at its finest and most original."
record collector (verified owner) –
"A cacophony of Celtic wildness… Magnificent."
louder than war (verified owner) –
"Avant-garde soundbites to post-punk and definitely psychedelic
aquamarine (verified owner) –
A hugely important album from a refreshingly inventive band – find out more at hanterhir.com
dave franklin (verified owner) –
Some music is purposefully very general, aiming for mass markets and trying its damnedest to appeal to the widest demographic possible. Other music speaks more specifically, of where it comes from, reflects the people and places which birthed it and has a more heightened appeal to a small but more fanatical audience. Even if you weren’t aware of the Cornish heart that beats within the band, musically you would probably come to the conclusion that The Saving of Cadan is born out of an ancient and dramatic landscape, certainly somewhere loosely within the Celtic fringes.
Which brings us to the next obstacle. See the word Celtic and many people will immediately conjure sonic images of sweeping folk music and Clannad-esque cliches and whilst there are some deft and delicate passages within the music, these are topped and tailed by everything from psychedelia, freak-rock, world music, even hip-hop and trippy electronica. But like folk music, this is story telling writ large, with a central narrative straight out of folklore connecting the various songs.
And it is a mammoth project, even on CD the 21 tracks required two discs, pick it up on vinyl and you get five sides of music! But because of that it has plenty of room to explore, not just the story, which is told in both English and Cornish, though just as often reduced to emotive voice as instrument soundscapes, and most certainly musically.
Arloedhes An Lydn is a slow burning piece that evolves from strange alt-folk to feedback drenched rock to saxophone driven crescendos and finally grunge intensity and if they can do that on one track, imagine the dynamics they are able to employ over the albums entirety. Song of The Lady is early rock and roll colliding with a musical theatre rant, Tonight is a wonderful lucid dream and Worlds Apart a crazed garage rock groover. I could go on…I won’t, there is nothing to be gained by me trying to describe the scope and imagination of this album any further. Best you just go and buy the record and if I haven’t wetted your appetite by now to the idea that something awesomely unique or perhaps uniquely awesome takes place between this album’s covers then I fear that we can no longer be friends.
kimberly bright (verified owner) –
Folk-psych space rockers Hanterhir have been kicking around the Cornish countryside for a little over a decade. Although based in Redruth, founder Ben Harris (vocals, guitar, keyboards) took inspiration for the band’s name for Northampton’s red-light district, Semilong, translated into Cornish as Hanterhir. The rest of the band are Grant Kellow (bass, vocals), Mike Hewitt (sax, keyboards, vocals), Lou Pienxha (flute, vocals, violin, clarinet), and Jason Brown (drums, percussion).
Hanterhir’s second release, the ambitious double-CD album ‘The Saving of Cadan’, is a folk-psych meets prog rock concept album. Here is a brief summary of the story, since the arty, symbol-laden CD booklet, half in Cornish like the album, isn’t very helpful in that regard: a boy named Cadan tries to drown himself in Carn Marth Lake on the ancient hill that will be a familiar name to Aphex Twin listeners. He is rescued by an entity called Morwenna, described by Harris as an evil spirit cursed to be bound to the lake or The Lady of the Lake, but who nevertheless loves (“As love grows/So sorrow goes”) and rushes to save him. Despite the affinity they feel toward each other, the two ultimately can’t be together (‘Alone Again’, ‘Worlds Apart’). The lyrics to ‘Song of the Lady’ should shed some light on the plot, at least for Cornish speakers.
Harris seems to have invented this story by taking bits and pieces of local and regional folklore. A concept album begs to be combed over for clues and meanings. Cadan is Celtic for “warrior” but is a fairly recent name, not one that pops up in any old stories. Cornwall has no shortage of elemental water spirits, but Morwenna doesn’t seem to be one of them. Morwenna is the name of a Welsh saint, the patron saint of Morwenstow, who has a holy well associated with her by the church she is said to have built single-handedly. If the original Arthurian Lady of the Lake was ever referred to as Morwenna, I can’t find a reference to it. There is a reaper spirit called Figgy Dowdy associated with a well on Carn Marth, but honestly Morwenna sounds much more poetic.
Knowing this backstory could help the listener enjoy what is a proper rock opera that desperately needs to be staged as a proper theatrical experience, ideally at the amphitheatre on Carn Marth. The stand-out tracks, even if you have no idea of what this lengthy album is trying to achieve, are the easy, folky ‘Darallow’, ‘Tonight’, ‘The Fisherman’ and ‘The Sun Came Up Again’ as well as ‘Morwenna & the Lamb’, all swooping, dramatic vignettes. The flute at the hypnotic beginning of ‘Hope Comes With Love’ is wonderfully atmospheric.
Lee Trewhela from Cornwall Live calls Hanterhir’s songs a cross between Pink Floyd and Arcade Fire. If that were true, I don’t think this album would be half as good as it is.
ian fraser (verified owner) –
It’s a wonder that the time-honoured tradition of putting a load of musicians together in the country and leave them to their own devices hasn’t result in some calamitous Lord Of The Flies type scenario. Pleased to say that crisis seems to have been averted this time as well, as this group of indigenous Cornish musicians, coalescing around the Redruth area (recording venues include a Methodist chapel a cricket club and llama farm) find sufficient inspiration to turn in five (?) sides of vinyl or two CDs worth of material that must have stretched budgets as far as it is likely to test the stamina of anyone contemplating taking in all of this in one listen.
The results are a muscular, at times anthemic; sprawling and occasionally lumpen concept album, but full of interesting surprises. ‘Hello Sunshine’ acts almost as an overture the ambitious 21 track opus, beginning sedately enough with floating keys before clipping into action like a squat rock band from the fringes of Stonehenge circa 1980. Stirring stuff, driven along by some solid riffing and wailing sax and a good omen for what’s to follow, before a further change of mood and pace starts ringing faint Prog alarm bells. Remember, for better or worse this is a concept album after all. ‘Delivered Hope’ is dreamy eyed, a quite lovely Floydian slip of a thing and yet they can’t resist crashing through the stockade, at which points it morphs into something that sounds like Van der Graaf Generator fronted by the chap from Jethro Tull. It’s all lavishly old school and the influences map like an inter-state if not inter-space intersection, By the time ‘Step Backwards’ steps up to the plate either they’ve started recycling ideas or this has the instantly familiar and welcoming feel of a timeless folk rocker. If the latter then they need to rush-release for 6 Radio airplay (it does lose something in the 80s style soloing though).
Switching discs and ‘The Dream’ packs a pleasingly experimental, trippy feel with dub notes and has to rank as one of your reviewer’s favourite cuts. ‘Alone Again’ (as elsewhere) contains trace elements of early Bunnymen as well as a most Satie-sfactory coda with added birdsong. By ‘Worlds Apart’ my multiple selves are having a great time spotting the musical reference points (I’m winning that one, by the way). In some respects they save the best until last with ‘This Is How It’s Always Been’, a breezy semi-acoustic number with guitar and flute the fore not four to the floor. It clearly demonstrates what they’re capable of when the reign in the excess of ideas and over-delivery.
The Saving of Cadan is a rollercoaster of a ride and one that requires of the listener a plentiful anaerobic capacity. Being hard to pigeonhole means that the listener will like some it but may struggle to embrace all, and that goes for individual compositions as well as the album as a whole. This is a valiant and very worthwhile effort, though, and if it doesn’t always succeed then it isn’t going down without making an impression – one that becomes more favourable with perseverance. It is one that you’ll be tempted to dip into repeatedly in order to get the most out of the constituent parts. Replicate this live and they could prove to be a pretty useful addition to your festival, too.