Nature and Organisation - A Dozen Summers Against the World (1994)

Nature and Organisation was the solo project of Michael Cashmore, who for nearly two decades helped write and perform with neo folk legends, Current 93. Even though this band was always labeled as just a solo project the strange thing is some of the regular participants in Current 93 in the early to mid 90's (Rose McDowall, Sally Wood, & David Tibet) made contributions to this release and future releases as well. Even stranger is the fact that the music isn’t two far off from sounding like something Current 93 would do; yet it still does have its own unique charm to it.

'A Dozen Summers Against the World' is the projects debut single/EP and although its just nineteen minutes its still quite good. 'Wicker Man Song' is this EP's first offering and its a rather sweet sounding yet melancholic folk song with guitar, flute, violin and bells. The song in question is actually a cover of the song Magnet wrote for the 1973 film The Wicker Man, although it's nearly exactly the same as its film counterpart. The always-impressive Rose McDowall does the vocals on this track and it's amazing how similar her voice is to the gal who sings it in the movie and interestingly if you've ever seen the movie you'll know the enormous effect this film had on the neo folk genre.

The next two songs are short instrumental pieces. Both are under two minutes, and while the first song uses just a violin (or cello) part II sees the use of a bassoon, which really gives off an interesting sound, and adds a nice feel to this short song. The next song starts off with a repeated loop saying ‘loneliness,’ plus some very nice acoustic guitar. Eventually David Tibet’s voice is heard, and he begins to read off some text in both English & French for the next couple of minutes while the guitar and repeated loop continue on. Then at about seven minutes into the song it takes a rather odd turn and suddenly becomes very noisy. All other music and voices disappear and suddenly there are some loud drums and cymbals crashing for the next couple of minutes. Then once again at about ten minutes into the song Tibet’s voice and the repeated loop appear along with some sample of some other strange sounding song, and eventually it all fades out. A very odd, but still entertaining experimental song.

After this EP Michael Cashmore recorded two full-length albums, the first, 'Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude' released in '94 as well is considered one of the best neo folk releases ever, while, 'Death In A Snow Leopard Winter' from '98 was completely different as Cashmore went for a neo classical style instead. Unfortunately the three releases of NaO are very much out of print and nowadays Michael occupies his time with his new solo project, which he releases under his own name, but will save that for another time.