A BEAUTIFUL SONG OF NIGHT AND DAY // Comus - The Herald // Composer Reaction & Analysis

[@orangetiny]

You should totally do a full album review of this !! A creepy weird masterpiece of a trip ..

[@mooninites3]

You will NOT BELIEVE what the rest of this album sounds like 🫵💀

[@oweb7754]

Beautiful song from my favorite folk album. A real shame this album is still so underrated in prog circles and also that the band imploded before they could record anything else with this lineup. Personally I'm a massive fan of the disjointed movement structure here, I think there's enough stylistic and tonal similarity between each section for it to still feel wholistically satisfying. Also love the overwhelming rhythmic layering especially from the acoustic guitars on the 1st and final sections, gives it this real physicality and earthiness, just as a song describing the grandest movements of nature should have.

[@izzyizzzbizzzzy]

FINALLY SOME COMUS! This is very exciting lol

[@No.Man.Is.An.Island9]

Comus... Amazing band, amazing record! Bryan, I second others' opinion and recommend you to check out the entire album :) The other tracks are very different from this one - some even quite chaotic, dense and explosive but in a good way.

[@chagatainouveau]

One of my favorite songs ever. "Beautiful melancholy" is a good way to put it. I especially like the atmosphere of the solo acoustic guitar in the second movement.

[@progperljungman8218]

Not only does two English folk adjacent bands line up today (the other being Moulettes). It's also two bands with unique qualities to them. So, Comus could also well have represented uniqueness for this week's channel theme. Glad You liked this as well Sir! And a really good analysis too! I don't believe there's theremin in here. In my album copy's liner notes, there's "slide" that might have been able to produce that sound. There IS a similar sounding "folk instrument" though: bowed saw - where you bend the blade to elicit different notes. (BTW, double tracking was a thing and got utilised here afaik)

[@CriticalReactions]

Cool to hear about the double tracking technique being a thing around this time. I looked up the bowed saw and it sounds similar enough that it might have been what was being played here. I'm not sure what the "slide" is but I get the idea it can smoothly move between notes so that's probably a good guess as to what was being used.

[@thereference2337]

Seeing my absolute favourites pop up here, again and again, just makes me happy. Comus, one of those bands that all connoisseurs of music agree is just pure eargasm and magic for the brain! Together with bands and/or artists like, Nektar, Solaris, Guadalquivir, Camel, Mike Oldfield... list goes on. Oh how joyful it is to be able to enjoy all of them in this glorious day and age of technology :-D

[@Plohph1]

Hell yeah! Would never expect this! This is by far their best song imo, and it is such a masterpiece. I think that sound you thought was a theremin is a bass where he is kind of bowing the strings really high up on the bridge with a slide or something. It is such a great sound! Tangerine dream did something simmilar on their Zeit album.

[@pechondelgado]

We gotta get some Canterbury style Prog on this channel. Gong, Khan, Camel, National Health...

[@progperljungman8218]

Yeah, and Caravan, Hatfield and the North... He's done some Gong by special selections though.

[@mrpharmacister]

Love this band! Great that it was chosen.

[@markdrechsler5660]

This whole album is wonderfully strange and beautiful. Too bad they never really released any more music.

[@tornoutlaw]

Oh, they had a much weaker follow up album in '74, "To Keep From Crying", and the decent comback Album "Out of the Coma" in 2012 after Mikael Akerfeldt brought them back for a show on the Melloboat Festival in 2008. You can watch some very old youtube clips of that gig.

[@mooninites3]

Doubletracking was definitely possible. But not many people were doing it.

[@citrus7115]

You gotta check out the rest of this album it's amazing

[@LuDux]

Folky with prominent bass and strings and lots of vocal range Goldfrapp - Cologne Cerrone Houdini kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJTWh3WcZa2Zndk Two almost identical (backing) vocalists Austra - Lose It kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJycfXuqiJuZgtE

[@hyperluxo7124]

I was waiting for this moment since the prisoner listening. Comus is just something else

[@TheMagicalArden]

One of the craziest folk bands. Another great freak folk song is Jerusalem by Simon Finn.

[@hyperluxo7124]

you should listen to Drip Drip or Song to Comus. perfect songs for halloween season 😂

[@YtuserSumone-rl6sw]

👍 great