Lud-In-The-Mist is a transatlantic glitch-folk ensemble of voice, banjo, bass clarinet, bass guitar and electronics. Rooted in the glitch-folk practice of composer Christian Johannes, they explore folk materials from across the sea: they give them new lives; they let them die peaceful deaths. They are tender, warm and uncompromising, moving like mist through an open field: slow, alive and ever-changing. Come listen: it will not sound the same again.
Their current project, songs_from_a_fallen_empire, is a meditation on the Anglophone folk traditions of the United Kingdom and the United States. Rather than treating these songs as monuments, the ensemble looks for their quietest corners: the tender, vulnerable songs, many of them about war, loss, and leaving. They reveal a softer side of waning centres of colonial power, and a tradition that has always held both its grandeur and its grief. Acoustic instruments sit beside electronics; old melodies are handled gently but never preserved in amber; both carefully kept and gently undone.
Christian Johannes – banjo, electronics, voice
Liberty Corbett – voice
Nick van der Woude – bass clarinet, voice
Merle Havas – bass guitar, voice