Folktronica and fantasy fuel Martin Green’s latest adventure

Martin Green’s latest album, The Portal, spins a dark tale of obsession, drugs and sound recording – and it has its roots in vivid childhood memories, writes Jim Gilchrist

From Mayday Morris dancing to the booming maelstrom of rave culture, Martin Green’s latest album, The Portal, and its attendant podcasts spin a dark tale of obsession, drugs and sound recording spanning some 40 years, but its roots lie in vivid childhood memories.

The accordionist and composer, well known as one third of the folk power trio Lau but also as an inventive creator of such multi-media shows as the Ivor Novello Award-winning Aeons “sound walk” on Tyneside and the acclaimed Flit at the Edinburgh Festival, has created what he calls “a fictional podcast for unusual times.”

The catalyst for this “little day dream that spiralled out of control” lies in his Eighties childhood in Sheffield then Cambridgeshire and a singular conjunction of images.

“My Dad, who was a Morris dancer, used to take me on Mayday to dance in the dawn,” he says. “Also at that time, 1988, the Second Summer of Love was taking place. I’m nine at the time and, in an event which isn’t quite true, I’m standing on a hill with the Morris dancers, watching raves churning out.”

Green’s earlier recollections of his father’s Morris team in Yorkshire were particularly fraught. They danced with the Tup, a grotesque, ram’s-headed figure which features in certain Morris traditions, and of which Green was “genuinely frightened.”

Discussing these memories with theatre director Wils Wilson, who has worked with the Royal Lyceum and National Theatre of Scotland, among others, resulted in a disturbing and time-twisting tale worthy of a David Mitchell novel, involving two obsessive sound-recordists who try to bridge their enforced separation through the tapes they leave each other.

“I suppose some of it is pertinent right now, because they don’t see each other for nearly 30 years but just leave messages for each other hidden on these recordings – which was great fun for us,” he laughs, “because we got to make lots of fake documentary recordings.”

While its theme of separation has obvious current resonances, Green also sees the tale as being about the very nature of recording itself. “I think recording has a very interesting relationship with time. It can only happen in real time, but it gives you enough triggers of an event in the past to kind of bring you back there.”

With co-commissioners including the Edinburgh International Festival, the National Theatre of Scotland and the Southbank Centre, the material was largely recorded and produced remotely during lockdown, in collaboration with Wilson and playwright David Greig, among others. Also involved was electronic producer and DJ James Holden, while guest musicians include the award-winning singer and concertina player Radie Peat of the Irish band Lankum, similarly award-winning piper Brìghde Chaimbeul and Yasaman Najmeddin, who plays the qanun, a Middle Eastern zither. Podcast actors include Dylan Read and Alison Peebles.

Green’s “folktronic” soundtrack swirls and grinds with samples and beats. Although based on his accordion and keyboard work, much of the instrumental texture, he reveals, is manipulated sound from Chaimbeul’s small pipes. There’s an astonishing sequence when Radie Peat appears to sing backwards out of static crackle, to spooky effect, suggesting the electronic voice phenomena beloved of paranormal investigators. Elsewhere, the accordion wheezes of the title track metamorphose into dancy-trancy mayhem, while the Tup is invoked to the clamour of zither and synthesizers.

The Portal was released yesterday by Reveal records in digital form or as a five-CD set including the 12-episode podcast. As for Green’s Lau commitments, the trio has an informal online Facebook event tonight and plans to release an EP of traditional material before the year’s end.

In the meantime, another product of Green’s quirky lockdown ingenuity can be found on his website. A Place of Crisps and Pianos is an engaging “soundwalk for isolation” based on early morning peregrinations from his home in Pathhead, Midlothian, with daughter Edie, roping in sumptuous multi-tracked brass from trumpeter Laura Jurd and one angry dog.

The Portal is available from streaming platforms and www.martingreenmusic.co.uk

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