Nigel Eaton, Paul James and Sheila Chandra, Ancient Beatbox (Cooking Vinyl,1989)
Nigel Eaton and Andy Cutting, Panic at the Cafe(Beautiful Jo, 1999)
Duellists, English Hurdy Gurdy Music(Panic, 1997)
If you really want to wake the neighbours, play any of these CDs loud! Yes, we're back from our Midsummer tour that consisted of just all-night "barn" dances. The band's pleased with the tour, but bloody tired right now. Danse Macabre's been looking for a hurdy-gurdy player for quite some time now as we've got fiddlers, bagpipers and just the right amount of percussion. But good hurdy-gurdy players are as rare as musicians willing to play all-night dances! So I'm jealous of just how good Nigel Eaton is as a hurdy-gurdy musician on these two albums. Not that, I hasten to add, are the other musicians on these albums anything but first-rate!
This is dance music in the tradition of Blowzabella, Citizen Camberet and Prego, which is to say all of these albums are lively and interesting enough to keep you dancing for hours!
According to the The Duellists Web site, Nigel Eaton originally played piano
and 'cello, moving to the hurdy-gurdy when his father, Christopher Eaton, started
to make them in 1981. In 1985 he joined the groups Blowzabella and Ancient Beatbox
with whom he has toured extensively in Britain, Europe and South America and
recorded six albums. He also appears on numerous records with artists ranging
from Robert Plant, Scott Walker and Marc Almond to The Philharmonia and 
The New London Consort, and soundtracks for films such as "Aliens" and "The
Name of the Rose." Regardless of who else is on the album, the distinctive sound
of Nigel's hurdy-gurdy playing is the unifying sound of all three albums. And
fellow Blowzabella musician, Cliff Stapleton who plays on The Duellists album,
will be known to many of you as a fine hurdy-gurdy player in his own right.
What's interesting to me is that aren't that many recordings of British hurdy-gurdy
players that I've been able to find!
It should be noted that all of these albums appear to be one-offs and I find no indication that any of these bands plan on recording again. If I'm wrong, I'd be delighted, but it's a long shot that we'll see more CDs from these bands. Like Danse Macabre, these bands are very obviously far more interested in doing dances than spending time in a recording studio. Can't say that I blame 'em -- playing live is far more fun than the tedious undertaking of recording an album!
English Hurdy Gurdy Music by The Duellists features Nigel Eaton and Chris Stapleton on hurdy gurdy and Chris Walshaw on pipes. This is one of my favourites, with fine playing and interesting tunes. It's lively and modern -- a fine updating of the sound that Nigel helped to create in Blowzabella. As noted above, this is not quiet music to be savoured along with a cuppa of herbal tea. (Does anyone really drink that merde?) No, go get the Chinese gunpowder tea, brew it strong, and then put English Hurdy Gurdy Music on loud. This is a trio playing self-penned dance music which was written collectively by the group that was loosely inspired from, and more or less rooted in, the English and French traditions. With bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies, they provide fast-paced dance music that features rhythms underpinned by the sound of the drones. As Cliff Furnald of Rootsworld noted in his review of this CD : "A bewitching piece of work that never sacrifices melody; plus, at loud volumes, your neighbors will think that you're up to no good." There's not a weak -- or quiet! -- cut here. Oddly enough, to me ear there is a distinctive French feel to this CD which reminds me of the Cock & Bull Band, another group which also uses French-derived tunes. It doesn't detract from this fine CD at all, but it's puzzling.
Panic at the Cafe is largely Blowzabellians Nigel and Andy, but Ian Luff (bass and cittern) who also played on English Hurdy Gurdy Music is here, as Tim Panting (guitar, keyboards). (Did I mention that Andy told me that they might be recording a new Blowzabella CD? Keep an eye out for it as it should be bleedin' great!) This was originally a cassette-only release as so many great dance CDs were, but in 1999 Beautiful Jo released it on CD. Recorded in 1993, the album features the superb playing of two deservedly celebrated members of Blowzabella: Nigel Eaton (hurdy-gurdy, cello, keyboards) and Andy Cutting (diatonic accordion, keyboards). Tim Panting (guitar, keyboards) and Ian Luff who also was in Blowzabella (cittern) also lend their talents to the wealth of traditional and composed pieces. (Note to music critics: Blowzabella is not dead. They are very much alive as a dance band! So stop referring to them as being defunct.) There are no bagpipes on this CD, so the play and counterplay is between the hurdy-gurdy of Nigel and the diatonic accordion of Andy. This is closer than English Hurdy Gurdy Music to the classic sound of Blowzabella -- see particularly their albums Blowzabella Wall of Sound and Pingha Frenzy -- with a fuller sound than the previous album. As three of the blokes are apparently playing keyboards, me guess is that explains the "wall of sound" feel! What we really have is a stripped down (slightly) version of Blowzabella minus the bagpiping of Jon Swayne -- certainly not a bad thing to have!
I've saved the strangest CD for last. Nigel Eaton, Paul James and Sheila Chandra are Ancient Beatbox which apparently also the name of this album. Ok, there's nothing terribly odd, but Sheila Chandra, who is an Anglo-Hindi pop diva, adds a touch of the surreal as a vocalist on "Raining" that is quite jarring. The music here is a tasteful merging of English trad -- well, Blowzabellian style trad -- with elements of Middle-Eastern and possibly Hindi pop. It's widely rumoured that a second album was recorded but not released. It's worth noting that Sheila sings on just one track ("Raining"), and does some odd vocal effects on another instrumental track, so the bit on the CD cover "special guest vocals by Sheila Chandra" seems a bit of an overstatement. This is really a duo of Nigel Eaton (cello and hurdy gurdy) and Paul James (keyboards, bagpipes, percussion, etc.) And can you guess which band Paul James was in? Yes, we have another offspring of Blowzabella! It's not a bad album, but a little too odd for me full enjoyment. Panic at the Cafe and English Hurdy Gurdy Music will get far more play by me than will this album. It's not a bad album -- not just as strong as the other two.
That's all for this time. I just got me copy of the new edition of Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, which features a female rock-and-roller as its central character, so I'm going sit in my overstuffed chair and read for a few hours!
See me review of Whirling Pope Joan's Spin, which features Nigel Eaton (hurdy-gurdy, 'cello, percussion) and Ian Luff (guitars)!
