In-the-moment folk improvisers The Cider House Rebellion are releasing their next album Genius Loci 2: The Valley of Iron on Friday 1 April this year. Master accordionist Murray Grainger and award-winning fiddle player Adam Summerhayes have recorded a collection of spontaneous tunes, inspired by the Rosedale Valley and its incredible industrial history. The album forms part of a wider multi-media project, Ironstone Tales, to be rolled out throughout 2022. PRE ORDER HERE
With backing from Arts Council England, the album is their fourth since 2020 and its story has already gained traction after being featured on Matthew Bannister’s Folk on Foot podcast.
Genius Loci 2: The Valley of Iron once again demonstrates how The Ciderhouse Rebellion’s instinctive compositional method draws seemingly timeless melodies from thin air. The toll of industry on people and landscape; the ghostly remnants of buildings; the echoes of the souls who lived, worked, and died within them; the smell of the landscape; and the call of its birds.
Rosedale (the Valley of Iron) lies at the heart of the Yorkshire Moors. Genius Loci 2: The Valley of Iron is The Ciderhouse Rebellion’s musical response to the valley as it is today – lonely, haunted and beautiful. Adam and Murray drew inspiration from the sense of history, the ironstone industry now gone and the imagined lives of the thousands of people who had worked there. For over a year (and in all weather) the pair visited and re-visited the valley, exploring the moors and the visible remains of its industry. They sought the Genius Loci – the ‘spirit of place’ that inspired each track – each one created and recorded on the moors edge. Drawing from the innate energy of the landscape that surrounded them, they performed and recorded on the open moor. Sometime inside an old kiln, or clambering over the once fortress-like walls in order to stimulate a response to the post-industrial landscape.
This is improvised music of the moment – as though spun from the wind and weather, drawn from the whispers of history, and as if created from the very stones of the valley itself.
