Happy Birthday Margaret Ayre!

Raising a glass to Margaret Ayre with a few of her amazing Fern Knight recordings and performances.

LINKS 

Fern Knight Bandcamp site

One For The Weekend: Fern Knight

Here's an intriguing gothic fairytale filmed by Derek Moench to go with song The Poisoner from Fern Knight's superb new Castings (vhf) album, their fourth and best yet.
Once again it's the bewitching voice of cellist Margaret Ayre that draws you in but Castings is a considerably less fussy affair for the Philadelphia/D.C. crew, moving further away from the chamber folk precision of their previous work towards headier prog-psych territory.

It seems like some Sourdeline may have seeped into Ayre's songwriting while listening back to the songs from their La Reine Blanche album while she was putting together the liner notes for Guersson's reissue. And the influence of King Crimson clearly weighs heavy as can be heard from the Fern-ized version of Epitaph and Ayre's own companion piece From Zero To Infinity.
Incidentally, along with shooting the group's video clips, Moench is also responsible for sweet cover art for the Castings album available now on vinyl and  digipak CD. Even though the CD comes with the bonus track Cave Of Swords, the limited-run RTI audiophile pressing housed in heavy old-school gatefold "tip-on" sleeve is hard to pass up. Either way, Castings is on my 2010 best-of list. 

 
The Poisoner by Fern Knight

Fern Knight:  "The Poisoner" from Derek Moench on Vimeo.

LINKS
Fern Knight http://www.fernknight.com/
vhf http://www.vhfrecords.com/catalog/122.htm