TC Lethbridge | The Sons of TC-Lethbridge

March-on! 'Dogntank', 'Bayard's Leap' and other stories

24th Mar 2004

by welbourn TEKH

Doggen and Kevlar are now back from the Spiritualized tour of Japan and Australia and apart from a trip to Greece this weekend, that’s the end of their Spiritualized activity for the time being. It is our intention to get together in the next week or so to record a studio version of the track ‘Shudy Camp’ which we performed at ‘Rome…’ It is a track that we had attempted to record once before, but the ‘Rome…’ rehearsals transformed the song from a spoken word outing into the world’s first archaeological rap! Yep, you heard of it first here!

The next few months will also see the recording of Doggen’s solo LP ‘Dogntank’ and the release of a ‘sons of t.c.-lethbridge’ side-project called ‘Byard’s Leap’ on the ARC label .

‘Byard’s Leap’ is a project that I have been recording with Templar Brighton whilst Doggen and Kevlar have been away Spiritualizing. The recording is almost complete and we are now into the editing stage of production. Basically, it is thirteen tracks of rumbles, pulses and drones overlaid with post-punk guitar and field recordings. The album takes its inspiration from sites and features that can be found upon the Lincoln Heath, including; the shrine of Viridius and the three mothers at Ancaster, The Drake Stone at Anwick and the circular preceptory at Temple Bruer….. All being well, the CD should be available from this web-site in May.

The story behind; ‘F.U.S.? (Fixed Universal Scale?)’

The track ‘F.U.S.? (Fixed Universal Scale?)’ on Disk One of ‘A Giant’, questions the existence of, what T.C. Lethbridge, believed to be an glitch in our understanding and perception of time. The track was conceived from a personal experience of this anomaly at the stone circle of Barbrook 1 in the Derbyshire Peak District.

I first visited Barbrook 1 on 19th January 1989, six months after my ‘discovery’ of Avebury, an encounter that had inspired me to undertake a pilgrimage to other megalithic sites around the country. As it was one of the closest stone circles to my home in Lincoln, Barbrook 1 soon became, for me, a frequently visited place.

But it was on my fifteenth visit to the site on 20th October 1995, that I encountered the strange phenomenon that would inspire the track ‘F.U.S.? (Fixed Universal Scale?)’;

Fixed Universal Scale?

Today my thoughts are on time. Through autumn mist I walk across Big Moor.

On this murky day, the relationship between the stones circles of Barbrook 1 & 2 is fractured, and in this familiar landscape I have become disorientated.

I have strayed from the cairn-lined pathway that follows the ridge of high land between the ring of Barbrook 2, and the giant ring cairn to the north of Barbrook One.

In the swirling mist, my visibility is limited to only a few yards and although I am unconcerned by my disorientation, I begin to feel a little giddy.

To compensate, I focus on the gorse beneath my feet, in the hope that I will locate the track from which I have strayed and once again regain my bearings.
Unable to find the path, I glance upwards, and I am confronted with a landscape which is both alien and unfamiliar.

The mist that had previously enveloped me has now vanished and I now have a clear view of my surroundings. The air is no longer damp but brittle and clear and the abruptness of this clarity alarms me.

I am immediately aware that I have strayed down the hillside from the ridgeway track and find myself almost level with the Barbrook 1 ring which rises before me - but this is not the circle as I know it!

The ring is now complete, and the dark stones rise ot of the retaining earthen bank. I feel my temperature begin to rise and I experience a deep panic.

I glance downwards in search of stability but my feet are no longer surrounded by heather but by a fine, short wire like grass that stretches down to the Barbrook in the valley below me.

On the southern bank the heathered hillside that has long been familiar to me, is now replaced by green, stone lined fields where an unfamiliar crop is growing. Amongst this propogation, high on the slopes, I glimpse what appears to be another circular, stone shrine presiding over this arable land.

My attention is drawn back to the magnificence of Barbrook 1 directly in front of me. The unfamiliarity of this scene makes me cautious and I am aware I am experiencing the world ‘out of time’.

Suddenly I feel a deep need for rationality, and I glance down at my feet, and I once again witness the heather that is a familiar feature of Big Moor. I feel my temperature drop and I am once again enveloped by the swirling mist of this autumn day.

The familiar site of the ruined circle of Barbrook 1 is immediately before me, and impulsively I glance at my watch. For today, my thoughts are on time.

The archaeologist TC Lethbridge once observed; “Time, as we know it in daily life, is just a convenience for the observation of sequences of events.....There is no such thing as a fixed universal scale. Even to us, the divisions of out arbitary time-scale can pass at very differing speeds.”

In the spring of 2002, I produced a demo of a track featuring the above words. It was my intention to create a piece of music that would capture the un-nerving claustrophobia of the moment. Using a simple looped chime and some rising and falling drones I created an acceptable demo that I played to Doggen and Kevlar over at the ‘Mouse House’ studio in Nottingham. The actual recording of the track was to prove to be one of the most traumatic and intense experiences of the whole album.

Recording was planned for when Doggen and Kevlar returned from a Spiritualized tour of Japan and Australia, but it was shortly after this experience that Kevlar was taken ill and hospitalised with leukaemia. We had already started work on the recording of ‘A Giant’, and it was strange being in the studio without Kevlar. Both Doggen and I thought it important to continue with the recording in Kev’s absence, and it was during this period that we created the tracks ‘A pilot’s Eyes’ and ‘F.U.S.?’ The winter days spent in the studio creating the tracks where productive but somehow a little transient without Kev’s presence.

By the time we had come to finish the track in the spring of 2003, Kev was out of hospital and convalescing but was fit enough to contribute the single drum beat that features on the track. The beat was inspired by the ‘Obby ‘Oss’ festival that takes place on 1st May in Padstow each year. A picture of this swirling entity is featured in the accompanying booklet to ‘A Giant’. Julian, Templar and myself had visited the festival that May and we had recorded the proceedings on mini-disc. Listening back to the recordings, the syncopated beat was, for us, a key element to the proceedings and this repetitive pounding was considered an ideal backdrop for ‘F.U.S.?’. With Kev’s presence on the track, it somehow felt complete, now that everyone was back on board ‘The Good Ship Lethbridge!