High Broad Field
Iceflower/Trisol TRI 279CD
Released: November 2006
Tracklisting: Millennia • Love must wax cold • Easy prey • Nature reigns • The moor’s runes • Lucifer on the moor • And he shall rule • The flood • Down into the earth • Earth’s song • The oncoming storm • A high broad field
Bonus DVD: High Broad Field film by João Paulo Simões (tracklisting as above)
Use the player below to listen to a track from ‘High Broad Field’:
Buy the CD: SOLD OUT
Buy as a digital download from iTunes: 
Lyrics for this album: click here
This album saw the light of day in 2006, released through Iceflower/Trisol. It comes in the form of a medieval mystery play, with characters and a plot that run throughout. Jason White again accompanies on cajon, giving the loops a more solid rhythm. My daughter April takes the part of a wayward child-god, Neil McSweeney is the squire, and Lloyd from Naevus is the churchyard cat!
It sounds better than its blurb sounds. It’s a softer and more contemplative album than ‘Ogham Inside the Night’. I was in fact tempted to keep the heavy and high pace of the ‘Ogham’ album, but like to vary my sound on each album, and explore new avenues of sound. One of which on this album was looping and layering my voice through the violin microphone pick-up.
I do still play some of these track in my live set, though out of context and to the unfamiliar audience they can sound like you are a god-botherer! ‘A high broad field’ has a lovely pre-christian pagan jig feel to it though, and is really nice to loop and play. ‘Easy prey’ and ‘Love must wax cold’ are the main tracks that have survived in the live set.
This album has sold out, but is available for digital download via iTunes. At some point I will re-release it through Redroom.
Here’s what I wrote back then:
First of all, I wanted to make an album that was different in character from ‘Ogham Inside the Night’. That album, as with this one, was written based entirely on looping my violin, and the processes that entails—so I can play the songs live and solo. For the tech-nerds among you, the pedal I use is the Linesix DL4 Delay Modeller pedal. (It should come with a big warning banner on the side of the box: ‘Warning! Does not include talent!’) It would have been easy (and lazy) to carry on in the same vein as ‘Ogham’; I had got into a good ‘groove’ with that album. And it isn’t so easy to change the character of my sound drastically, using only loop pedal, violin and voice. The changes have to come in the musical style, not in the instrumentation. Hopefully I managed it—‘High Broad Field’ is more easy-going and gentle. There are less ‘lines’ and layers—I was determined to make music that hinged on simple soft melodies, uncomplicated beats and a light touch. Woodcuts. Jason White, playing cajon again on most tracks of the album, gives his usual wonderful contribution to the music. He is the heartbeat of ‘High Broad Field’, and the ‘Ogham’ album. Concert promoters should look in their hearts and wallets to ensure he comes along with me for Sieben concerts—he adds so much to the sound, both live and on the albums. Big thanks also, to João Paulo Simões for his mammoth efforts in making the DVD to accompany the ‘High Broad Field’ album. The ancient rite of artist-bartering (otherwise known as ‘I’ll play on yours if you play on mine’) was invoked for this cross-pollination. I gave him free rein to do what he liked with the DVD (as well as going on and on about the album and its themes at great lengths in his earhole ;-) and the nature and landscapes I love are captured with a purity and honesty I thought he would bring to the table. I still can’t get used to the people in the nature scenes though—I’m still fighting the urge to stand up and shout “get out of my garden!” at them on the telly.
The original inspiration for the album and its themes came from a place. High Bradfield is a village just to the north west of Sheffield. It’s a place I love the varied landscapes of—not far outside my home city of Sheffield, but far enough away that you can’t see the city. High Bradfield is perched on a hill, a high ridge, facing the weather, facing the moors. You can see over to Derwent reservoirs, down to pretty, picturesque Low Bradfield in the valley below, and up and over the crags lining the hillsides in the distance to wilder moorland. And Howden moor too. The road up from Low Bradfield is a steep one, a bugger on a bike—1 in 3 at times—that’s 33% to those of you in the modern world of mainland Europe ;-) Round here measurements are still made with sheep’s heads, horse hands and traditional pie-span techniques.
St Nicholas’s church at High Bradfield is a prominent beacon, drawing the eye on the skyline from Low Bradfield down in the dip. Sitting there, by the river, the old stone bridge and the bread-weary ducks, it stands out. The only thing that competes for attention is the burial mound above and to the left of the church, overgrown by birch and oak. At this point I should confess that despite a vivid imagination, sometimes I’m not too hot on facts—the burial mound (as I imagined it) turns out in fact to be mounded earth that formed the basis of a Norman fort there, on Bailey Hill. (Okay, so maybe I the clue was in the name ;-)) Ah well, it set me off thinking in a good direction—the old church and the new; Nature’s earth or God’s earth; the village as a complete world, housing all constituent parts, old and new.
I did some re-reading of the York Mystery Cycle plays—often hilarious and irreverent pageants, pre-Christian and Christian tidewaters washing together. The burial mound and the Christian church. And with this, and with the landscape and character of High Bradfield in mind, the idea of a story—more specifically a play—as the basis of the album came about. The village served as a map, scene by scene expanding, as the Knight passed through each location. Then came the ideas of who he would meet along the way—animistic—the trees, the moors, the hill, and the Earth would have their say. And God, Lucifer, The Lamb and the squire theirs too. And I was determined to have a good sing-a-long at the end, like all good pageants of this ilk—with God, Lucifer and a mixed cast all singing to a merry conclusion.
Reviews
Stylus magazine • Evening of Light magazine
“This 2006 release from Sieben, the solo project of violinist Matt Howden, who has also worked with Sol Invictus and Der Blutharsch, is a real masterpiece – seriously. ‘High Broad Field’ is the sixth Sieben album to date, and whilst the 2005 album ‘Ogham Inside The Night’ was a work of beauty, intelligence and ambition, ‘High Broad Field’ manages to surpass it. 12 tracks span 54 minutes, and the album is based around the concept of the medieval mystery plays performed at York, coupled with a psychogeographical investigation of the landscape in and around the Yorkshire village of High Bradfield.
One track elides smoothly into the next, and the album really demands to be heard as a single long piece of overlapping voices and musical themes. ‘High Broad Field’s narrative is performed as a play, relating the tale of a knight who awakens after a thousand years' sleep, and embarks on a quest, in which he encounters various characters and is forced to make some difficult choices. The album reaches a joyful and valedictory climax on the closing track, ‘A High Broad Field’, with the Knight deciding to return to the earth:
And every flower will bear a fruit
And every seed will plunge a root
On this high broad field
The predominant element of Sieben’s music is, of course, Matt Howden’s violin, often looped and overdubbed to add to the fullness of the sound, and played in a variety of unorthodox ways, including plucking, strumming and slapping. Of the guest musicians present, the most constant presence is Jason White, who plays the cajón, an Afro-Peruvian box drum producing a dry, rattling sound, a little like a bodhran played on the rim. A number of voices round out the cast of characters, including Lloyd James of Naevus as Cat, Neil McSweeney of The Gents as The Squire, and Matt’s daughter April as The Lamb and also the voice of God! Matt occupies the roles of The Earth, The Hill, Knight, Lucifer and The Moor.
‘High Broad Field’ comes sumptuously presented in an eight-panel deluxe digipak, copiously illustrated with landscape photography and accompanied by a thick booklet containing the transcript of the play which is ‘acted out’ throughout the album. And as if all this weren’t enough, the album comes with a bonus DVD, containing a film by Portuguese film director João Paulo Simões which was specially made as a track-by-track companion piece to ‘High Broad Field’, a bewitching piece of eye-candy filled with imagery of the natural world, in particular the Yorkshire moors which are such an important part of Matt Howden’s inspiration (he lives in Sheffield). This really is an essential purchase for neo-folk fans and those who enjoy rich, complex lyrics filled with nature imagery, earthy medieval eroticism, Celtic mysticism and a diffuse pagan spirituality.”
Simon Collins, Judas Kiss magazine
