Music by Nicholas Langley & Andrew Newnham.
Originally released by Arachnidiscs Recordings, 25th September 2015.
arachnidiscs.bandcamp.com/album/woodland-ritual
"The repetition of sounds and percussion bring cohesion to the album as one narrative, while still managing to evoke a neo-pagan appreciation of the spirits that dominate our thoughts when we are left alone in the woods."
Leigh Empress, Discorder Magazine
www.citr.ca/discorder/jancember-2015-2016/erm-nickname/
Excerpt from Erm & Nickname interview by Jakob Rehlinger for Archnidiscs Interred Views...
arachnidiscs.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/interred-views-erm-nickname/
Arachnidiscs Recordings: Tell me a bit about Erm & Nickname. Who are you and what’s up with this recording?
Nickname: Erm & Nickname are Andrew Newnham and Nicholas Langley. We met at the age of twelve and almost immediately chose the aliases Erm & Nickname for making radio-style tape recordings and comedy videos. We were both enthusiastic owners of recorder-Walkmans so we eventually accrued hundreds of hours of improvised radio, comedy, songs and general silliness, most of which will never see the light of day.
Fast forward about twenty eight years and the Erm & Nickname personas can become a useful psychological retreat for us. We escaped into the woods of East Sussex for four days armed with only battery-powered gear and the sole intention of making music. Not to record an album or work on a cohesive project, but to immerse ourselves in the therapeutic music process. We recorded rock songs, funk tracks, comedy numbers, but sooner or later the wood spirits always took over. They enveloped us, spoke through us. Our thin electronic sounds became one with the crackle of campfires and the wind through trees. The constant activity of arachnids, birds, insects and worms seemed to transmit both the life voice of creation and the deadly sirens’ call into the ground. The song cycle ends with Hope.
There’s this Buddhist proverb “Living without hope is like burying oneself,” which should be the album’s tagline really. It was truly an unintended deep, personal, musical and lyrical experience for both of us….
ADR: You say the cycle ends with “Hope” but it literally ends with a scream. Is “Hope” to you a primal scream in the wilderness?
Nickname: That’s not really a scream, just a thing we do at the end of recordings to make each other jump. We love to unsettle ourselves.
ADR: It definitely unsettled us every time it came around during the dubbing. EQ’d perfectly to sound exactly like someone standing on the walk outside our front door.
Nickname: A primal scream in the wilderness though? Sure that can symbolise hope. Screams for help, mating calls — making sound always involves some form of hope, I’d not really thought about it, but maybe that’s the main function of making music, to hold onto hope!
Erm: It’s almost that there is hope; getting through tough times and challenges… But around the corner something new rears its ugly head. Just when u think its all “gonna be alright” for a time it is… then the dark comes. It is like a cycle… with hands held; with support of others it is conquered for a time…
released February 4, 2016
Recorded 10th -12th July 2015
Special thanks to Jakob Rehlinger.