The One Two Bird And The Half Horse

SOMEWHERE INSIDE the beginnings of a leaf in a forest far away from things, lays cocooned a memory of a song not yet born. If you lean a gentle ear close enough, you might hear her name spoken. Orla Wren is a dream child, a smile before sleep, an old lullaby, an ache in the space between. And my Tui knows Orla Wren best of all.

I have waited a long while to tell you about his incredible creation, this work that has taken him in and out of quite some years, and now I can. The One Two Bird And The Half Horse is here.
I have watched over two years as these most intricate of outpourings grew. As Tui made and remade these twelve beautiful sound sculptures with infinite care, I learnt that his craft is like mine, but the hairs of his paintbrushes are the most delicate of violin notes, and his paint is birdsong, netted from the bedroom window at dawn. I have never known anyone so heartfelt about the work he does. And it is this heart-feeling that he weaves amongst the melodies he makes with many strange and wonderful instruments. There are zithers and whistles and bells and fiddles and erhus and Uzbek changs and fence-twangs and melodicas and accordions and beautiful voices from Georgia and Japan and France and Scotland and birds and clarinets and cellos and creaky chairs and sewing machines and flugel horns and Tibetan singing bowls and pianos and music boxes and children's songs. And all of these are taken like threads on a laptop-loom and woven, with a quite extraordinary ear for detail together.

Tui is often asked what kind of music he makes, and this is an almost impossible question to answer. For him nature is his cello string, whether it be to record the rain on the tin roof of an abandoned house, or place a microphone close by the pebbles shifting at the sea's edge. Together with these collected voices of wild instruments he weaves into a precisely chosen part of the tapestry small lines of melody, sometimes played by him, and sometimes imagined by him but sung in imaginary words by others. And then he listens, sometimes for days, inside the womb of the music, until he hears more chinks in the warp and weft, where he gently places a harmony made from electronically altered footsteps or the rustlings of something that could be moth wings. And then maybe he takes a whistle and plays just two more notes, long and barely there, and lays them, repeated like a playground song, two octaves away from where they started and bouncing from ear to ear, like a blanket over the whole music as if to tuck it into bed for the night.

The One Two Bird and The Half Horse is Tui's second album, and in his sphere (seemingly named "folktronica") Orla Wren is quietly rather successful. This beautiful work has received some eloquent and deserved praise already (a few here below), though it has only just been released, on the Japanese Flau label. I am enormously proud.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It distils sublime wood smoke folk atmosphere and pointallist digitalis to the subatomic level, until it becomes effectively the same stuff that makes brooks babble and winds whisper. ~David Sheppard

A dream I would like to return to... ~Ben Eshmade

...these porcelain pirouettes are possessed and woven of a beautifully demurred tapestry that‘s all at once untamed and pure, not so much primitive but rather more natural, the melodies appear like daydreaming serenades, barely there, as though like flickering apparitions caught from the corner of the eye, willowy and fragile, partly hazy and blurred seemingly just out of focus, their free spirited timbres idyllically teased with an unreal arresting tenderness as they sway murmuring like woodland opines caught adrift upon a delicate breeze... ~The Sunday Experience

...au vu de la petite fille crayonnée qui sert de pochette, et à entendre la voix fébrile, haut perché, qui s’échappe des morceaux, vous allez penser qu’Orla Wren est une fragile petite fée, qui dépose ses disques discrètement sur le rebord de nos fenêtres... ~Delicious Scopitone

Les pattes craquantes des insectes s’occupent des percussions, tandis que les toiles d’araignées se tendent dans le vent pour vibrer doucement, harpes minuscules. ~Delicious Scopitone

... achingly lovely ... ~Boomkat

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have been enormously privileged to see inside the making of such unique music.
And even more so to have my scratchy pencil drawings adorn the album sleeve, my flute and clarinet and accordion meanderings to be mixed into the music and be asked to tell an animated story around one of the tracks.
For many months I sat crouched in our Scottish attic moving tiny pieces of paper underneath a camera to tell the pencil-drawn tale of The Fish and The Doll. And here it is at long last.

There is another film on the album too... made by Tui from little snippets of film of my family and me when I was just five. These he has made black and white and layered with old photographs, and exploiting my Dad's original wobbly video camera technique, he has created a glimpsed evocation of childhood, half remembered, and half longed-for. The First Born Daughter of Water.

Both of these films are for tracks featuring the amazing vocals of Georgia born Russudan Meipariani. We do hope you like them.




Tui sees the world in a very beautiful way. Like me he always notices the outsider, the one who is innocent or old, who has known madness or has lines of sad experience etched around her eyes. Those who long to hold hands with these folk will hear what Tui is trying to say in his music. Orla Wren is for these people and about these people, and if you are one of them it is for you.
These songs are fragments of a yearning with no name. They will evoke in you a childhood, down amongst the grass blades, where it was once possible to find sunlight floating in a puddle and make stories for all tomorrow's mayflies.
The songs' names are as beautiful as their sounds, and you must listen to them alone, sitting by a tree or at the edge of a hill. Put the music right into your ears so that you can hear every lilt and scuttle, so that you can find that place in you where your tears began.








_____________________________________________
Here are some places where Orla Wren can be found...

orlawren.com
orla wren on myspace
orla wren at flau
You can buy the album from cargo records here
sideways through sound (A psychedelic reverie of a radio station half way round the world who made The One Two Bird And The Half Horse the featured album on the show a few weeks ago.)
orla wren blog
orla wren at expanding records (the home of his acclaimed debut album Butterfly Wings Make)
& on street corners and village greens of Europe playing wonkily handmade instruments alongside my yet-to-be-made puppet theatre...

The lovely delicate photographs of frosty leaf, downy seed-head, foggy trees and moth-cocoon are Tui's too :)

Paper November

AUTUMN-END frost has sprinkled down onto our hills these last few days and the evening sunlight of early November shines through the chimney smoke in the village as we go out sporting thermal undergarments to collect coal. The house is a pile of chaos with little bundles of saved cardboard and bubblewrap stuffed in corners in preparation for more wrappings. We have been packing up and throwing away, there are bin bags for charity shops stacked around the rooms and we had a bonfire of old bills. (the bits of paper asking you for money I mean, not a burning of police forces!) A good lot of books have been sent off and bits of furniture too.. and I think I might have accidentally thrown my wits into one of those bin bags as well because I am starting to go a little bit mad!

The wheeled home is nearly there... not yet full of our things but sporting a brilliant second hand hobbit-sized oven and lots more excellent Tui-cupboards. We still need to stop the icy wind creeping in a few gaps and add another window or two, but it is almost ready for its journey I think. We have even bought a brass galley pump tap to adorn our rustic little kitchen. It will pump water up a pipe from a tank below and round and out the spout, into the sink and down the newly piped-in plughole.

There are endless things to think of before we go.. we have to organise mobile internet, buy a small and quiet generator for power until we sort out a solar panel arrangement, rip the music from 100s of CDs so as to leave them behind, parcel up and send off an enormously heavy singer sewing machine table, sell my little car, work out what to do with all my old work, buy 7 new wheels for the truck, and ready it for MOT, sort through yet more stuff... and nip out when the sun shines to make a little money. And amongst all the upheaval, I have dropped the printer! Now it makes clankings that it shouldn't make and refuses to print at all. This is very annoying with a capital A and it is headed for the bin bag corner too. It's not entirely a disaster though because it'll mean we'll have to order all our prints from the printing place now, which, tho a bit more pricey, is easier, better quality, and saves both space and late night cursings when bits of blue ink spurt all over the place for no earthly reason other than to try you.

The book sale was a storming success for which I'd like to say a big thank you to you all.. it took me two whole days to wrap them all and the faces of the post office ladies were a picture when we trundled in with our armfuls of bundles this morning. I must say that I have made rather a silly underestimate with many of the postage costs overseas.. books are so heavy. So a few of you might be getting little garbled emails from me asking for a pound or two more! It is very nice I must say to know that the books are going to places where they'll be enjoyed.

In these remaining four weeks I am putting away paintbrushes.. so clocks and other such things will be put on hold (as if I take hold of some imaginary painted pendulum and stop it swinging). I also (rather insanely) have a stop frame animation to finish before we go. Only Rima would leave such a slow artform to the very last minute to complete. I think I can do it though, and it is looking lovely so far. It appears that something switches in me when a deadline approaches and a new kind of desperate creativity emerges. Here are a few snippets of the paper pieces I am inching about under a camera up in the animation attic. I am enjoying it, and listening to Tui's beautiful and intricate finished Orla Wren album while I do it. Both album and animation will be unfurled early next year if all goes to plan.

So surrounded by big brown wrapping papers and little cut-out whispers of animation papers we approach our big and exciting journey. I shall try to keep news here, but forgive me if my visits to your blogs are less frequent and if my emails are spelled dreadfully or make little sense at all. I think it's time to light the fire now, Tui's just home from an afternoon of cupboard door makings and I'm back off up the attic ladder after removing from the carpet a nasty little cat present.

I leave you with a cold dusk tree shivering without its leaf coat growing up on the hill behind the village at the end of a stone wall.

Orla Wren Films

ORLA WREN as you may or may not know is the name of the beautiful music that Tui makes.
Indeed, his second album, The One Two Bird And The Half Horse, the making of which took him through two years, around tender sounds, over hoorays and in and out of sorrows, is now complete and ready to whisper into ears far and near, and an astonishingly beautifully crafted creation it is. I am full of admiration for this work that I have seen in its birthing, and I will write more about this one day soon when this music is available to be heard, and glad the world's ears will be then.

In the meantime... we are making films for the music. My cut-out wonky-handmade stop-frame animation will be for one track - The Fish & The Doll, and it is emerging slowly up in the animation attic day by day. Another film is just about ready, made by Tui for the last track The First Born Daughter of Water from little pieces of film from my childhood.

Here you can see some tiny snippets of stills from the first scenes of the animation and stills from Tui's film where layers of inklings of glimpses of my younger days are merged delicately to compliment the music.

We would like to ask if any folks out there might have some old footage that they would be happy to send us to be used in a similar way. A unique collection of hints of people's stories would be woven together to make a wonderful film or two to go hand in hand with this music. Please drop a word to orlawren@gmail.com if you can help. Thanks muchly.

The Animation Attic

PARCEL TAPE and cobbled-together ideas of make-do animation studios have, in the past few days and weeks, been sensibly hurled into the Rubbish Bin Of Silly Plans and replaced with a quite state-of-the-art-yet-cosy set-up under our eaves, complete with all sorts of bells and whistles and contraptions to make animating easier.

Follow me up the ladder (which incidentally, I fell down the other day and bruised every bit of me!) ... to the Animation Attic, where I have made a comfy little hideaway for move-clicking.
You can't stand up in it, but on the underside of a legless table I have arranged my studio.



Following my first depressing attempts to secure the video camera with tape to some bits of clamped wood, and finding that the camera sagged over days as the tape melted, I was spurred on to track down a sturdy alternative. The gem of a find that has saved my bacon is a strange prehensile grabber sort of a thing called a Gorillapod (like a tripod of the simian variety) which was perfect for holding the camera still at a 90 degree angle. It is vital for stop frame animation that the camera is As Still As The Grave otherwise huge jolts occur in the film, lurching you out of your suspended disbelief.
Anyhow, as you can see the camera is clutching a plank of wood with its new monkey paw and I am able to happily move my tiny scraps of paper around to make my film.


Tui's Mac has also made life much easier, not that I know the first thing about them, having never laid a finger on one before now, but its smooth workings mean that I can concentrate on the task in hand.

I have been battling with the movement of waves on the seashore for the past few days. The beginning of the track is gentle and sparse and I had made a sea more worthy of pirates and leviathans, dark storms and lighthouse rescues! Though I am pleased with the movement of a gull in flight (made from several pieces of paper no bigger than half a nail-clipping). I have been pushing the pieces of the scene around with the tip of a sharp knife as my fingers are too big.

Today I have happily finished a 20 second segment of calm calm sea and am pleased. Another cheerful discovery was that I am able to animate at 8 frames per second, still achieving as smooth movement as I did with 24, and saving bucketfuls of time.

I have also begun my new attic animation with a different stop-motion frame grabbing program ~ Framethief, designed for use on the Mac and it is a wholly lovely program to use - simple and yet it does the clever things I need.

Tomorrow I will climb the attic ladder again with a cup of tea and a hot water bottle and sit curled up poking at little bits of paper until I have made some small seconds of film and my pin-needled cross-eyed body calls me back to the kettle.

Moving still pictures

WHILST EMBROILED in storyboarding the animation, I came across a review in the sunday paper about a book just published by Scholastic - The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. So intrigued was I that I ordered it from amazon and have just finished "reading" it. It has a most unusual format ~ sections of the text have been replaced by sequential images - soft pencil drawings, which move the plot onwards until a few pages of words are called for. The pages are all edged in black which gives you a feeling of being let into a great secret when opening it.
The story, which is based in 1930s Paris, follows a young orphan boy and thief - Hugo - and tells of clockmakers, trains, magicians, mysterious drawings and, to my great delight, an automaton. Selznick was much influenced by early cinema and indeed includes Georges Méliès - French filmmaker and special effects pioneer - in the story. I was particularly interested in this method of storytelling because the laying out of images in a sequence to tell a tale without words is something I must learn more about in my making of animations ...

This book led me to another exquisite book without words ~
The Arrival a Hodder publication by Australian illustrator Shaun Tan. This is told entirely with lovely sepia pencil drawings and conjures a strange yet not strange other world. I've not known much of Shaun Tan's work until now .. so will investigate his other books further. Any other recommendations and suggestions of similar books would be most welcome.




Automata spark my imagination no end so the tale of the automaton in The Invention of Hugo Cabret was a treat... Selznick based his automaton on a wonderful creation built by Henri Maillardet in 1800 which could write and draw. It was a marvellous feat of engineering that was restored to its former glory after being damaged in a fire:

Well... thus inspired I go to my drawing desk... the rain is relentless outside and the fire just lit...


NB: all images from the books are nicked off the web and copyright Brian Selznick & Shaun Tan - hope they don't mind :)

Some brown parcel tape & the beginnings of a tale ...

THE orla wren animation is begun!
The story is gently beginning to tell itself with pencil drawings that will be moved very small distances, remote shorelines and, of course, beautiful music in the autumn of its completion.
I have rigged up the most Heath-Robinsonian affair ever known which is supposed to be an animation studio .. this involves a video camera attached with brown parcel tape to some bits of damp kindling that never made it to the fire, which are screwed together and clamped to an old Singer sewing machine table flap... with bits of cardboard box between the clamp jaws to protect it. The lighting consists of an Ikea lamp balanced on a wooden stool balanced on some breadboards balanced on a box of drawing equipment. And the imagery is taped onto the top of a low shelf and encircled with shiny white card to bounce light back onto the scene.

I am using different stop frame animation software this time ~ Animator DV ~ which is designed for use with digital video cameras. We have managed to set the camera up so that it just "sees" the scene under the lens and then I can use the program to grab stills. Goodness knows whether I will be able to get to grips with it. Today there have been many grittings-of-teeth-ings whilst trying to animate the most minuscule paper character, as well as trippings-over-of-wirings and breakings-of-lampings and a little bit of cursing!

My last (and first!) animation was a rougher beast with characters and scenery painted onto cardboard.. and a tight deadline to work to. This time I am drawing the tale with a very fine pencil and the piece will be slower moving in subtle colours and with tender sounds.

After many thousands of frames and a good few months you will see and hear the delightful result!

I must be the luckiest of animators to be sat in the room animating to a beautiful track whilst it is being created. This ~ The Fish and The Doll ~ will become the first track of the new orla wren album ~ to be released later this year.

A Busy Nest

THE HERMITAGE nest is very busy at the moment ...

there are sketchings and paintings
and musical arrangings
and animation-plannings
and drivings in van-ings
and recordings of soundings
and coffee aboundings
and readings and writings
and staying-up-all-nightings

So while we are busy with all that, I leave you with yet another black-and-whitey snowy picture!

The Woods

TODAY'S TALE TAKES US INTO THE WOODS where things are not quite what they seem, where children get lost and maybe never found again and where the trees alone are witness ...
I have always loved the combination of music and strange imagery which has sparked my long interest in animation and all things puppety.
Stop frame animation holds a particular charm for me in its wonky darkness, its dark wonkyness; especially the masterful works by animators from Eastern Europe like Yuriy Norsteyn and Jan Svankmajer.
Thus inspired I took up the challenge of making a cut-out stop motion animated video for Polly Paulusma's single "The Woods" released earlier this year on One Little Indian records from her latest album, "Fingers & Thumbs".

Below is the result .. a five-and-a-half minute extravaganza of cardboard legs, wire butterflies and many painted backgrounds; each piece moved tiny bit by tiny bit ... at 24 frames-per-second ... which actually means that I made between 8000 and 9000 single captured images for the whole video.
It was a labour of love and I learned a lot as I went along .. It is filmed with a fairly high res webcam and the characters and sets are laid on layers of glass ( a trick I learned from reading about how Mr Norsteyn works )
Polly's lyrics inspired the forest-as-witness-to-a-dark-happening story ... which calls to mind a rather less than sugary Hansel & Gretel tale and conjures imagined fears of the archetypal forest as well as a real horror of a terrifying bogeyman, in more tangible guises. It speaks too of the turning of the year ...
I am pleased to say that it was received with smiles and kind words and even got played on MTV in Italy! And I must add that I would never have made it to the end if it weren't for the patience and brain of my kind brother.
It was my first ever animation .. but not my last!
I will be making a new and quite different and gentle-beautiful animation for the new Orla Wren album due out next year ...

Click here to see the video if you are having trouble viewing it.

Move-click-move-click-move-click-move-click ...