Milkweed

Event information

Milkweed is two anonymous musicians. They recently appeared in a live session on Radio 3's Late Junction, where Verity Sharp said that they “commune with the spirits of the past…[and] cast some great lo-fi spells…”

For three years Milkweed have refined a formula – taking existing source material (a folklore journal, a book on Welsh myths, another on bronze age human remains), cutting up the words and feeding them through a woodchipper of lo-fi production and experimental folk music. This time, however, they decided to push themselves further – to use all 400 pages of Thomas Kinsella’s masterful translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, rather than manipulated snippets. After it took an entire year just to process 20 pages, however, G found herself humbled. “It made me appreciate oral traditions in a completely different way, the intensity with which you had to engage with the work to feel like you could understand and transmit it.”

Exile of the Sons of Uisliu is one of many remscéla, or pre-tales, leading up to the Táin. In the text, Derdriu, ‘the loveliest woman in all Ireland’, has been raised in isolation until she is ready for the bed of Conchobor, high king of Ulster. Derdriu falls in love with Noisiu, one of the sons of Uisliu, and together they escape to Alba where they again find themselves in peril. They are lured back to Ulster by Conchobor, but are ultimately betrayed.





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