Both film music and folk turn a corner into Jim Ghedi’s deep, dark Judderman dynamic, each all the better for that exposure.

GOTHIC FOLK AUSTERITY

Jim Ghedi’s music has always opened up dark and rich vistas of imagery, so it seems now entirely apt that he has been here recruited for an actual soundtrack. And not any old soundtrack either; you couldn’t imagine a rom-com run through with his gothic folk austerity. But this is a bleak, black referencing of the Robin Hood story, awash with pagan imagery, so yes, please!

By virtue of the idiom, there is always a lot of what might elsewhere be considered filler, moody swathes of orchestral sounding music, in short and savage snippets. Here, they sit snug as a maggot in a tasty fester, conjuring up all the stark realities of the day. Interspersed come a selection of songs, both newly written and aged nuggets from the folk tradition, all run through with Ghedi’s singular holler. Interestingly, rather than the newfound falsetto he wreaks so effectively live and on Wasteland, here his tones are dialled down into (slightly) less alarming registers.

DRONE IS THE NEW NARRATIVE NUB

It is with scene setting we start. Drone is the new narrative nub of edgier folk music, and is here used aplenty, with harmoniums and hardy-gurdies joining deep pitched swathes of cello and double bass. Farm Attack starts in just this way, with ominous shards of higher pitched fiddle slicing through the already ominous mood, slashing effects that pierce the lower hum of broodiness. Little doubt is offered as to what is likely happening on screen at the titular farm. I haven’t seen the film, but I’d not be too optimistic about survivors. Slow bass strings then usher in the dread of a morning after, where the extent of the damage is likely revealed, as a Celtic melody starts to unfold, in mourning. This is Bold Pedlar, needing not to know why.

A gallingly wracked rendition of Two Corbies follows, a stunning example of Ghedi’s ability to conjure up the dark side, the ancient song never ever sounding quite so menacing. Over further drone, his voice is that of a gaunt spectre, the antithesis of fiddle-de-dee, surely to the point of alienating anyone brought up on The Corries or any of the many more anodyne versions available. (I rather hope Jean Redpath might have approved, mind.) The backing dips and drops between dense percussion heavy onslaught and elements of near acapella. Actually, I think it may be Ghedi’s finest moment.

UNSETTLING EXOTIC

More Celtic noir is conjured up for the brief track, barely a minute, which leads into the hazy shimmer of Lamentations Of Round-Oak Water, in which fiddle laments appropriately, to herald in the clarion like declaratory vocal of Ghedi. An extended low note sonar is the only other sound, which barely alters and, when it does, almost without any overt detection. A trumpet call, thin and distant, peals out, unsettlingly, and the song is strong enough to not need the visual it was written for.

At 5, nearly 6 minutes, it isn’t a moment too long, followed then by the even longer Elderfather Fight. This is a juddery exotic awash with moaning and lowing orchestration. Expecting a song, it is more a prolonged college of atmospheric, with the sound of marching feet, or is that a tumbril, to convey the unfolding action. Additional grinding sounds suggest the latter and it is not going to be a love scene. Eventually the mood breaks, only for even darker tangents to skew inward. Oo-ee-oo, as they say. I know I’m going to love the film.

WHAT WILL BECOME OF ENGLAND

There is only room for some pastoral bucolic following that, but Ghedi has no truck for such, here or anywhere else, for that matter. Instead the small hairs are once again erect, as one wonders quite what badness the Boat To The Priory might reveal. Like the sort of middle part of long form epics by (the) Pink Floyd, the middle of Echoes, say, or Atom Heart Mother, that is all you get, as, over picked acoustic, Ghedi asks What Will Become Of England. Yes, that one, the old song, Roud 1779, and, give or take the scorching simmer of orchestration and Ghedi’s Old Testament delivery, it is fairly straight. And enormously effective, too, ending on an icy blast that, to all intents and purposes, answers the question.

SYMPHONIC MAJESTY

Walking Again is actually the first to seem purely soundtrack, and is little more than a bridge, I suspect, between different scenarios, possibly time frames. It’s still carries a pleasant sense of symphonic majesty, though, and preferable to much played on Classic FM, a harp giving, for the first time, a sense of peace. A similar vibe veers through Sister Brigid’s Family, imbued with melancholia. If this is Ghedi’s first soundtrack, I cannot believe it will be his last, his feel for wider instrumentation encompassing way more than his simpler live palate of guitar, fiddle and FX.

Suddenly Making Arrows hurtles us into a very Game Of Thrones dramatic theme, one I suspect writ more large in the film, ahead moving back to the dark side for the sinisterly creepy Searching For Little Margaret, which also feels very OST, and driven, perhaps, more by the needs of the film. Clearly this can’t really be a criticism, such is the nature of film work.

I Owe This Life to You could have been more of the same, but there is enough sorrow coming through the grooves to raise it above, as piano ekes out the notes of a presumed lamentation. I admit I was ready or expecting another song by now, but the closing track, Robin’s Death isn’t one. Nonetheless it does pull together the various strands that have been explored earlier, in part the point and purpose of soundtrack, and, as a melody, certainly as evocative as many the Hebridean airs that I seek solace in, away from the wider world. And, playing it again, confirming that same point, I withdraw that hope for a song, at least until he’s ready.

UPWARD

Make no bones about it, this is a soundtrack but is one of those rarities, one that had stretch beyond just the film, and is certainly capable of providing mood music that requires no visuals, imagined, remembered or otherwise. The 3 songs are superb and Ghedi goes only upward in my expectation.

Jim Ghedi: Website

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