echo: A Pagan Hymnal

What’s does it mean to be pagan? It’s not just the hoary old gods, created to explain the mysteries of nature and humanity. It’s those mysteries themselves. Questions humans have pondered as long as we’ve been here.

As such, this is a pagan hymnal, written by people long ago who asked the same questions, found the same answers, in nature itself.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote our Genesis, Robert Herrick our psalms. William Wordsworth pens the Epistles. Percy Shelly’s words drip the same prophetic fire that went into Revelations.

The old gods are here too. William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe echo the loving hearts of Venus and Aphrodite. Christina Rossetti and Poe explore the darkness, William Butler Yeats the light. And you can hear the echo of Pan in Robert Frost and Lord Byron.

Musically this is all over the map. It’s our laboratory, where we synthesized the sounds that shaped who we are, and searched for the notes that tell that story. Where we learned the craft of music and recording, part alchemy, part witchcraft and part black magic.

The old gods never died, nor do poets. The lines they wrote were mirrors into the soul that still reflect to this day, for those who choose to turn their gaze that direction. So much has been left behind in this world, these words shouldn’t suffer that same fate.

This is our pagan nature, drug out into the light.

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phantasmagoria

ON JUNE 16th, 1816, Lord Byron opened a book titled Phantasmagoriana, which he and his house guests took turns reading from. From that night came Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and John Polidori’s The Vampyre, considered the first English vampire novel, and the precursor to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Drawing from that idea, herein lies poems from Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, Kipling, Ben Johnson and others, set to music. Musical influences range from British folk and Irish traditional, to Black Sabbath, King Crimson and Jethro Tull.

From the fairies who ride wild in the moonlight, to the danse macabre, it’s a look back at a time when people weren’t so certain, weren’t so brave as to believe that what we see with our eyes is all there is. And told in the words of some of the greatest lyricists of their day.

echo

A Pagan Hymnal

Paganism is quite often a nature religion, following the natural cycle. The seasons that not only divide the year, but life as well. A suite of songs from the romantic poets, based on these quarters of the calendar, a bit of Wordsworth, a plethora of Rossetti, a brace of Shakespeare and others poets, romantic and otherwise.

exiles

Folk Tales of Heartache and Woe

A trip down the gutters of the folk tradition. Recorded in a haze of despair and expensive alcohol, fueled by heartbreak, some of the more obscure folk songs out there. And so we present a potpourri of songs and stories, from the tragic to the morbid, disturbingly funny to the heartfelt … all the human emotions tied up in a singly bizarre, folkish package.