WOMAD

Paul James & Mark Hawkins

From United Kingdom

2001 Biography This is the story of a head-on collision between ex-Blowzabella and Scarp multi-instrumenalist Paul James driving a car full of traditional musical experiences and European jazz influences and film composer Mark Hawkins in a truck stuffed to the brim with dance and ambient music flavoured pies. The crash happened in the rainy green landscape of the south of England, not far from the ancient Ridgeway path and the White Horse of Uffington which explains why their debut album on the Italian label Ethno Suoni is entitled ‘Horse’. The acoustic / electronic, analogue / digital balance in James and Hawkins’ music is a given for many modern musicians and the pair see neither hierarchy or contradiction in making music that uses both bagpipes and samplers, guitars and computers. This is music that sees both deep into centuries of bygone musical tradition and forward far into a future of Japanese technology and credit cards. Police are still looking for a flock of bagpipe playing techno-dancing musical pies, somewhere on the A417 east of Swindon. Biography by Andy Morgan, June 2001Short biographyTwo experimental musicians drawing upon many influences of English and European music. Hard-described but packed full of European traditional musical influences and spilling into ambient music, dance, trance and jazz-inclined moments.May 2001