‘Tis the season for Yulatraktors to morph from Lunatraktors and celebrate in a more traditional style. They’re all set to Wassail.
With half a millennium of orchard-wassailing traditions behind them,ย Lunatraktorsย bring a fresh, psychedelic twist to the ritual of wishing apple trees โwรฆs hฤlโ โ grow hale, bear well!
The chance to perk up the midwinter with another broken folk spell. A drop of apple cider acid fromย Lunatraktorsย appears on Bandcamp on 17th January, 2025.
CELEBRATE OLD TWELVEY
Thisย Old Twelveyย (17th January, Old Twelfth Night),ย Lunatraktorsย invite you to experienceย Wassail. A wild sonic celebration of folklore, fertility, and deep-rooted ritual. Armed with a battery of bells, pipes, and goatskin drums plus some Moog Subharmonicon basslines and Korg mono synths, Clair & Carli conjure up medieval revels, Spiked with acid house, it’s a heady mix of medieval rural revels and psychedelic basslines. An invitation to celebrate the roots of this ritual and give thanks to the trees that sustain us.ย
2023’s Solstice Wyrd was a brilliant seasonal alternative to Slade, Wizzard and Cliff and the new single brings a similar acid house-inspired take on the ancient Twelfth Night orchard-wassailing tradition.
WHAT’S THE STORY?
In January 2024, Lunatraktors led a couple of hundred people singing the Apple Tree Wassail while processing around the trees of Compton Verney. In September, recording a Folk On Foot podcast about Bedlam, they remembered the tune in an old apple orchard next to the high security fences of the psychiatric ward at Bethlem Royal Hospital. And in December, they sang it again, with a couple of hundred more people at the Centenary Centre in Peel, Isle of Man. Back at their bungalow studio on the south coast of Ireland, with the tune stuck in their heads, Lunatraktors decided on a last-minute New Yearโs recording project.
The artwork features Kylie Darling, a Deaf queer ritualist and hedge witch, hanging from an oak tree โ a nod to the Hanged Man tarot and the appleโs symbolic connections to rebirth and secret knowledge.
Lunatraktors online: Facebook / X โ formerly Twitter / Instagram / Bandcamp
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Categories: Single Review
