The Dragonseidr CD...

‘Dragonseidr’ began life as an album of my own (Mark Henson) unfinished pieces of music with an idea of getting guest musicians & friends in to the studio to flesh the tracks out more. I booked the studio one evening with Jim & played him the drum machine & arpegiator synth part to ‘Wyrd Spayce’. It didn’t take long for Jim to pick up his guitar & jam along & then lay it down on tape & then suggesting what other instruments he could add to the cooking pot to improve ‘Wyrd Spayce’ even more. I was astonished & amazed at what Jim did to ‘Wyrd Spayce’. What started out as an Ozric Tentacles influenced track had been given an injection of bliss rocket fuel & had gone supernova before my very eyes & ears. I absolutely love it. It never fails to bring a lump to my throat because of the special memory I have of Jim’s vision for ‘Wyrd Spayce’. I get off on it every time.

It was Jim’s suggestion to get Marky Williams & Nick Winnicot to add drums & bass to ‘Zenoid,’ a Kraftwerk influenced tune. Jim had told me about the three of them improvising as ‘Pagan Dub Lord’ & was sure that they would enjoy adding their parts to my electronic doodlings. Once again, I was amazed to hear what they could do & how they just knew what to do, but more importantly how well Jim, Marky, Nick & myself got on.

After finishing ‘Zenoid’, I was asked if I’d like to add improvised synth part to a track called ‘Tip’ that had emerged in the first ‘Dub Lord’ session at Rich Bitch studios, Birmingham. I’ve always liked the idea of improvising. It was always more appealing than working out parts to a piece of music, plus not being a decent keyboard player & not classing myself as a musician, I much preferred to twiddle knobs & move sliders on my trusty Roland Juno 6 as the music was playing. Fortunately for me the other 3 guys enjoyed what I did to ‘Tip’ & it became part of ‘Dragonseidr’ & from then on ‘Dragonseidr’ became a Pagan Dub Lord album.

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The track ‘Curious Yellow’ features an astonishing performance from Paul ‘Prof Firestick’ Miller of Druidspear on viola & effects. ‘C.Y.’ is inspired by the Jeff Noon cyberpunk novel ‘Vurt’. The blurb from Wikipedia says: Vurt tells the story of Scribble and his "gang", Stash Riders, as they search for his missing sister/lover Desdemona. The novel is set in an alternate version of Manchester, England, in which society has been shaped by Vurt, a hallucinogenic alternate reality, accessed by sucking on colour-coded feathers. Through some (never explained) mechanism, the dreams, and imaginings of humanity have achieved objective reality in the Vurt and become "real".

Before the novel begins, Scribble and his sister-lover take a shared trip into a Vurt called English Voodoo, but upon awakening Scribble finds his sister has been replaced by an amorphous blob he nicknames "The Thing from Outer Space". From that point on, Scribble is on a mission to find another copy of the rare and contraband Curious Yellow feather (found within English Voodoo), so that he can exchange The Thing for Desdemona.

The electric mushroom artwork that graces this web page & the rear sleeve of ‘Dragonseidr’ is by Pete Woolaway who also contributed tribaltronics to ‘Curious Yellow’ & guitar to ‘Where Dark Things Dwell’.

Mark Henson.

For further information on the inspiration for the title ‘Dragonseidr’ please read Seidways: Shaking Swaying & Serpent Mysteries by Jan Fries published by Mandrake of Oxford.