Pearl Fishers / Boat Notchers

Antigen Records, 2014.

Two disc audio-visual special edition, housed in a hand-stamped 20 cm x 20 cm card wallet, with a hand-stamped Kraft card inner wallet, three inserts and a phenakistoscope.

Audio CD

A two-mile swamp holler from North Carolina; a Spanish song of sewing, arranged for violin, meat cleaver and wooden block; gamelan chimes teased out of a dismantled clock; a work song set to the rhythmic axe thud on a partly hewn log… The trio of Robin Alderton, Nathaniel Mann and Daniel Merrill has interwoven folk tradition with experimental practice for more than a decade. They return with a new album of live material culled from performances in Colchester, London and Milan. As the Wire’s Clive Bell noted from first-hand experience, “Their performance stands vigorously on its own strange legs”.

Bonus disc

The two-disc audio/visual special edition of this album includes bonus “video” material, which can be viewed using the earliest recorded animation device – the phenakistoscope. The phenakistoscope was invented by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau in 1832, based on the work of Michael Faraday and Peter Mark Roget. It is a printed cardboard disc with images separated by radial slots and is spun by hand, using a pin as an axis. The viewer looks through the slots into a mirror and a stroboscopic effect creates the illusion of animation. Minutes of frustration guaranteed. And yes, you have to supply your own pin.