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Dylan: I’d always read folklore and mythology as a child, and lately I’ve been listening to a lot of English folk music. But it was after my sightings that my reading really went into overdrive, specifically in regard to the English cunning folk and fairies. On a press trip in London late last year, I had an encounter and when I was over again a little earlier this year, I had another encounter. The plan for the album is that I travel around the UK to make field recordings, atmospheric stuff, in areas where there have historically been encounters between humans and faire folk. Then I’ll layer these sounds with my interpretations of classic English folk songs of meetings between humans and fairies. It’ll be packaged with a film of me travelling around Britain, a book with some artwork, explanations of the lyrics of the songs, and a bit of folkloric information.
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Yeah, right by the tube station. Camden Tube station actually has some folkloric significance. It’s on the site of a house that was owned by a witch called Jinney Bingham, or 'Mother Damnable'. It’s a tale that the Camden Underworld has since exploited. But there was also a gibbet there, at the crossroads, where they used to hang people and the Fleet River used to run by there – fairy sightings often take place by liminal water boundaries, rivers and the like.This figure, you saw them quite early in the morning?
Yeah, it was around 7AM. It was dead, no people. Nothing was open. Apart from a couple of coffee shops.The figure looked different to someone you’d usually see in Camden? They definitely weren’t, like, a cyber-goth?
Right. [laughs]So, where was the second sighting? I was at Waterloo Station, and I was trying to decide if I could make it out to Mortlake to visit [16th Century scientist and occultist] Dr John Dee’s house. I’d come to the realisation that I’d left it too late in the day and I was going to head back. I was right where you come up from the tube station to ground level, maybe 30 feet from the big clock that hangs in the middle. This sighting was a lot quicker, but it was equally intense.What differentiates these figures from humans?The size, that’s part of it. They’re not tiny, they’re not midgets – they’re about my grandmother’s size, about five feet tall. They have a piercing gaze. When I see them, there’s a real sense of a change in perception. Reality becomes sort of brighter, I guess. Things fade into the background. It’s a weird feeling. And it’s different from other weird feelings I’ve experienced, be it seizure-related or drug-related or whatever.
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