SEAMUS CATER & FREDRIK RASTEN

Strange the Grass Grows is the first album of the Anglo-Norwegian collaboration between Seamus Cater and Fredrik Rasten. The album takes three English and Scottish ballads and augments them with three original pieces written by Seamus, which try to represent European folk tales previously unwritten as songs. Sweet Lemeny, Long Lankin and Death and the Lady are accompanied by Beowulf’s Arm, a short rendering of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, The Podhajce Goat, a balladic telling of Olga Tokarczuk’s mesmeric folktale from The Books of Jacob, and For The Ear That Is No More, a story of the blacksmith that Pythagoras happened upon giving him his eureka moment into the physics of instrument tuning. For Death and the Lady the duo is joined by trumpeter Torstein Lavik Larsen who breathes longing tones into this 14th century milestone of English folklore.
A striking factor in the music is a deep resonance in how the instruments and voices blend. Focusing on the careful harmonic and timbral fusion of just intonation tuning, songs evolve in painterly strokes and keep developing in a kind of ‘deep listening’ between the players. Tones which may sound electronic are always acoustic or sometimes electro-mechanical. Both musicians are active in the field of just intonation and microtonal music, and for this project Cater tuned a 1926 London made Wheatstone concertina in a system which allows 21 distinct tones to the octave. Informed by a contemporary approach to composition, the duo tread paths between two schools of revivalists, each redefining arts from the ancient past; the collectors who anthologized folk song, and Helmholtz and Harry Partch who breathed new life into the Greek tunings of old. In this meeting of times, Seamus Cater and Fredrik Rasten create and recreate stories in sound and word.
Recorded and Mixed at Pest House, Amsterdam (2024) by Seamus Cater
Mastered by Jeff Carey – Cover drawing by Kuno River Hennig-Lee – Design by Mainly Afternoon
Track credits:
A1
The Podhajce Goat (Seamus Cater, 2023)
Seamus Cater - voice, concertina
Fredrik Rasten - voice, guitar
Based on Olga Tokarczuk’s text ‘Pesel’s Tale of the Podhajce Goat and the Strange Grass’, from ‘The Books of Jacob’ (2021, Fitzcarraldo Editions), translated by Jennifer Croft.
A2
Beowulf’s Arm (Seamus Cater, 2023)
Seamus Cater - voice, concertina
Fredrik Rasten - voice, guitar
Based on Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf (2000, Norton)
A3
Sweet Lemeny (traditional, after Peter Bellamy, arr’ Cater, Rasten)
Seamus Cater - voice, concertina, jew's harp
Fredrik Rasten - voice, guitar, piano
B1
Long Lankin (traditional, arr’ Cater, Rasten)
Seamus Cater - voice, concertina, harmonica
Fredrik Rasten - voice, guitar
B2
For The Ear That Is No More (Seamus Cater, 2023)
Seamus Cater - voice, concertina, bass harmonica, Rhodes piano, cymbal
Fredrik Rasten - voice, guitar, cymbal
This song could not have existed without Daniel Heller-Roazen’s ‘The Fifth Hammer, Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World’ (2011, Zone Books).
B3
Death and the Lady (traditional, Dolly Collins, arr’ Cater, Rasten)
Seamus Cater - voice, concertina, harmonica
Fredrik Rasten - voice, guitar, pitch pipe
Torstein Lavik Larsen - trumpet