Crutchfield, Robin

The Hidden Folk

Label: Important Records Country: USA

"Robin Crutchfield, the critically acclaimed performance artist, moved to New York in the '70s, only to cross over from art into music with his no wave band DNA, recording tracks for Brian Eno's historic "No New York" album. This was followed by Dark Day, a series of collaborations with Nina Canal, Nancy Arlen, Tuxedomoon, Jim Jarmusch, and others, resulting in releases of various genres: cold wave, proto-electronic, medieval pagan, and electronica. Trading plastic transistors and wires for wood and strings in 2000, he went green, taking up ancient instruments, harps, drums, lyres and psalteries. He currently pursues and explores acoustic trancelike daydreamscapes of the mysterious and elusive inhabitants of an otherworld most have only experienced through folktale and fable.

If you venture far enough into the forest, you may be so lucky as to stumble across a miniature race which make their homes in hollow oak trees that contain passages to underground caverns where they work at harvesting minerals and gems. This musical collection of 19 gems of true "underground" music, a hidden folk music, attempts to capture the essence of the wee magic ones in soundscapes that depict them at work and play, the only evidence of these mysterious, hidden ones that we can offer. The rest of us are fortunate enough that they continue to share their planet and work in subtle ways that keep us from snuffing all the joy out of it. Won't you cooperate with them a little; do as you will be done by and leave the place a little better than you found it?"-Important Records