To Our American Friends

We often get asked why we have not come to the U.S. since our reformation, and when we intend to make the trip, so this is just to let you all know where we stand on this issue at the moment.

You might be aware that we are self-funded and have limited resources. After 35 years of “separation” we all live far apart, not all of us even in the same country, and all the money that we earn from selling merchandise is ploughed back into funding rehearsals. To fund a working trip to The States we would first need visas, and it actually costs several thousand dollars just to prepare the huge volume of paperwork required to apply as performing musicians. Even after this complicated procedure is completed it does not guarantee our entry, as the U.S. authorities have it in their right to disqualify Comus as not being “culturally significant” enough to perform to the American public. That includes our many fans! Add the cost of air-fares for at least 7 people and we would already need several gigs to cover our expenses alone. As it stands U.S. promoters would have to be convinced that we would draw enough of an audience to make even a modest fee affordable. Another option is touring with a currently more high-profile band, possibly as part of a package, but unless we can find the resources to play in the U.S. it is just not financially viable at the moment. Presently our priority is to write and record new material - a process that is well underway. When that proves successful then we will look forward to realising expectations and traveling further afield to perform.

We thank you for your patience,
Comus

Bobbie's New Website

Many of you will be interested to know that Bobbie Watson now has her very own myspace site,where you can see what else she get's up to when she is not doing Comus stuff.

October 30th.

Recent visitors to our News page will have noticed that tickets are now available for the above gig/launch party. We have now been told that there is a promotional code that you can use on the ticketweb site to obtain tickets at the discount rate of £17.50. Click the graphic above to take you to ticketweb, and enter AA30XCF2 in the box marked "Promotional code".

You will notice something a bit odd about the video on this link - it's Roger, BUT IT IS NOT COMUS! We don't perform this song these days. It is off the second, less celebrated, album. So Roger got together with the Swedish band Piu for a one-off performance last December, and this is the result A good performance. and worth a look.

Roger Wootton Interview

Go to THIS LINK for a rare interview with Roger Wootton where he answers questions on all things Comus.

We are pleased to announce that we will be performing at the THE ROADBURN FESTIVAL which takes place from 16 to 18 April 2010 in Tilburg, Holland. We spent a lot of time in The Netherlands way back in the early seventies, so this is yet another "First time for 35 years" gig - a phrase which is becoming all too familiar! Please go to the above link for all the details.

The Melloboat DVD and regions

We did a lot of research (and heartsearching!) with regard to region formatting before releasing the Melloboat DVD. Ideally, we would have liked to have put out different versions for the different regions, but that would have made the cost prohibitive. So we took industry advice and settled on Region '0' (playable in all regions).
This format is apparently going to be used more and more frequently from now on, but, unfortunately, some people in the USA may experience problems with some older DVD players. We are told that the discs play fine in computers and laptops.

We apologise if you experience any problems with playback, and we will refund you the full cost of the DVD should you choose to return it to us.

We did our best!

Comus

Comus on the BBC

Stuart Maconie has chosen 'First Utterance' as the featured album for his Freak Zone show on BBC Radio 6 live this Sunday (5th). The show is broadcast between 17.30 - 2000 GMT.

You can warm up the valves early, rotate that dial and catch Freak Zone on your walnut-cased wirelesses. You can also apparently listen on DAB digital radio, digital TV (sky 0120, freeview 707, freesat 707 & virgin 909) & online.

Here's the web address for Freak Zone; www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/freakzone

and here's Stuart Maconie's email; stuart.6music@bbc.co.uk

and here's a picture of the man himself, just so that your imagination doesn't run riot whilst you're listening;



There is, incidentally, a dark, muttered legend that swirls around Comus' cave at the dead of night, that Comus were banned from the BBC in 1972 after Roger threw his toys out of his pram because the sound was (allegedly!) so bad at at recording session for Radio One.......

..........rehabilitation at last!

Jon

Afterthoughts on the Equinox Festival

Well, the Equinox Festival has been and gone, and Comus have played their second gig in 35 years!
The audience response was ecstatic and fantastic, and we unveiled the first of the new Comus songs, 'Out Of The Coma', as an encore. Things overran quite a bit though earlier in the evening, and we felt bad about the fact that Kinit Her's set seemed to have been cut short to accommodate us. Sorry guys.

An interesting event overall though! It was very good to catch the other bands, especially as I'm curious about the noise / electronica people, and listen to William Basinski and Heroines Of The USSR quite a bit.

It struck me, watching the musicians hunched over tabletops of electronics, that we had no immediate way of knowing for certain how the sounds were being generated; the tabletops of pedals, Electribes, delays and oscillators unleashed great oceanic waves of distorted and filtered sound that broke across the audience. I also wondered why we were all looking at the stage! Perhaps it's because we're so used to seeing musicians playing identifiable instruments that we can't quite relinquish the need to gawp.

I managed to snatch a brief chat with Pietro Riparbelli, who told me about his use of short-wave radio signals as the source material for processing. But I sensed, from a trawl through the websites, a chthotic sub-text to at least some of the music - hardly surprising, given the festival context - and I wonder how, or if, this influences the generative / compositional process. I don't know much about the esoteric / occult world at all. Perhaps I should have caught a couple of the lectures on offer earlier in the afternoon to get a sense of context.

Maybe because of the use of conventional instruments and the inevitable drone violin link with the Velvet Underground, but Yan-gant-y-tan were more immediately comprehensible compared to the music that preceeded and followed. Again, I'd like to know how their electronics conjurer, Mark Pilkington, works. I'm so used to the music 'running out' when I stop blowing or hitting something that it seems very attractive to generate almost limitless sound constructs from the tap of a finger on a mike!

Where did noise insert itself into Western music? Extending instrumental ranges / new instruments / oscillating valves / 'orientalism' / Debussy privileging moment and colour over structure? Radio waves? Futurism? Varese? All of these.....?

I remember reading somewhere that almost as soon as telephony was developed people began to listen to the static and started to interpret sounds they could hear in the noise. And of course, vinyl crackle has its own curious attraction.

I shall return to Rob Young's excellent 'Undercurrents; The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music', for further insights!

My alt. band, Red Square, were interviewed recently by Frances Morgan of Plan B (who, coincidentally, turned up playing bass with Yan-gant-y-tan at Equinox!). At one stage guitarist Ian Staples said that his earliest musical memory was of listening to the timbre of the piano when a note was played. I was struck by the fact that his earliest musical memory was timbral. It occurred to me that my earliest musical memories are largely melodic, probably vocal, but largely 'a-timbral'.

Perhaps that's why I'm fascinated by the noise / electronica thing, but don't naturally go there myself, and why my first instrument is the saxophone.

Jon

The Manchester gig poster

COMUS

(5 of ORIGINAL LINE UP, 2nd UK SHOW IN 35+ YEARS)

LIVE IN MANCHESTER

SATURDAY 27th JUNE 2009

St CLEMENTS CHURCH CHORLTON MANCHESTER

plus support from CIRCULUS

LICENSED BAR, DOORS 7PM

TICKETS FROM TICKETLINE

0161 832 1111

GET 'EM QUICK!!

Through the steaming woodlands

We are SO pleased to have a 6 page article about us in The Wire, (the magazine, not the TV show!), with the first official band photos for 37 years to be exact.....and for this to appear close to our Equinox Festival appearance on June 13th. (So, if you didn't know about it, you do now!)

The magazine is a bit specialist, but you should be able to find it in the big newsagents.

Unfortunately, Colin, our violinist couldn't come over for the shoot as he lives in Berlin, but we plan to have some more shots done this weekend when we'll all be together for a rehearsal. Hopefully it will be something suitably rural - in the steaming woodlands......or amongst the trunky deeps....

Really looking forward to our dates this summer - and we hope to add to these by recruiting an agent very soon. Keep checking this site, and the myspace - (www.myspace.com/comusofficial) for info.

Bobbie

Comus On Your Wall

Just a note to let you all know that we have decided to release a number of our limited edition signed art prints unsigned - if that makes sense! Basically we did not sign all of them, so there are a number available unsigned for only £10 plus the obligatory £5 postage and packing. If you don't already know, these are high quality prints designed by two founder members of the band - the original drawing by Roger Wootton, and the graphics for the setting by Glenn Goring. We are only releasing 300 in total, signed and unsigned, so take a look at our merchandise page if you want Comus on your wall!

P.S. We still have signed copies available for £25 plus £5 p & p

On being forced to play the flute by Roger Wootton....

Until I joined Comus, I had managed to avoid ever having to play a flootie, an instrument I generally characterised - with an appropriate display of fastidious horror - as the preserve of sulky legions of wan, pre-pubescent girls called things like Petronella and Chlamydia.

That said, on the qt, I had previously wielded a tenor recorder on a couple of album tracks with an earlier project, B So glObal, but I had articulated and phrased the recorder parts in a style drawn (very loosely!) from listening to an old vinyl album by the astonishing Japanese hocchiku player, Watazumido-Shuso.

I was given this album as a didactic Christmas present ages ago, and I was greatly taken with the intricate use of articulation, micro-pitching and timbre as structural devices; meaning and virtuosity, it seemed, could be expressed as much by the complexity of one note as by the speed with which it could be chained to others - a cautionary reminder in the then-current era of jazz-rock...........

but, time passed, and.......

....so much that is useful or important is lost in forgetting, in the neglect of observance and silted over by subsequent focus; I lost touch with Watazumido-Shuso.

I learned the changes, and constructed coruscating chord progressions over which, when called upon, I could deliver change-hugging flights of saxophone.

But, thank you, Roger - picking up the flute has renewed the connection with Watazumido-Shuso, and this has dovetailed into a re-ignited interest in 20th century 'art' music, where I have always known the flootie lurked, siren-like, waiting for me.


And the moral of the tale is; never say never; a metaphorical flootie might lie in wait for you too.


Anyway...here's a (non-exhaustive) selection of flootie / shakuhachi / hocchiku stuff that might be of interest:

'Syrinx' (Debussy) and 'Density 21.5' (Varese) - 20th century solo flute icons - Amazon or itunes downloads.

Bruno Maderna's 'Hyperion III' & 20th/21st century solo flute works played by Richard Craig - free FLAC downloads from the Avant Garde Project. Brilliant, brilliant site and repository for a huge number of out of issue 20th century works. If you want to dip your toes in 20th century art music, this is probably a good place to start.

Shakuhachi works played by Kifu Mitsuhashi - you can listen @ Last FM. Both of the albums are on download @ Amazon.com.

My vinyl by Watazumido-Shuso was called 'The Mysterious Sounds Of The Japanese Bamboo Flute'. It doesn't appear to be available anywhere now - beware of similarly named offerings!.....You can get a flavour of his playing here, though: Watazumido-Shuso

'Apparition & Release' a recent work by Michael Oliva for quartertone alto flute and electronics. You can listen (or buy!) here; Michael Oliva.

Any other suggestions? No. Not bloody James Galway, thank you very much.......

pip pip,

Jon