Oddfellow's Casino

Bio:
LISTEN OUT FOR ODDFELLOWS CASINO ON BBC RADIO 3's BETWEEN THE EARS PROGRAMME ON SATURDAY 27TH MARCH AT 11PM (OR ON LISTEN AGAIN IN YOU'RE OUT. OR IN BUT WATCHING MATCH OF THE DAY)
An English gem – as whimsical and bittersweet as Robert Wyatt or Talk Talk, but with edgier, more epic production. And the song We Will Be Here is an anthem in waiting. Marcus O’Dair
The Raven’s Empire carries with it a mystical belief that the humdrum world hides within it something stranger. David Bramwell, the songwriting brains behind collaborative project Oddfellow’s Casino, does not own a television. Nor he does he read newspapers, listen to the radio or have much to do with any other forms of global communication. That might help explain why The Raven’s Empire, the otherworldly, death-themed follow-up to Pickled Egg releases Yellow Bellied Wonderland (2002), Winter Creatures (2005) and The Absence of Birds (2008) is infused with such a fascination with the inscrutability of the everyday.
The original inspiration for Oddfellow’s Casino offers a metaphor for this. David grew up close to the huge Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire, which was built between 1935 and 1943 and involved the drowning of two villages, Ashopton and Derwent.
Derwent reappeared when the waters dropped in the mid 70s. You could see the church tower, says David. The image of that tower in the water was the catalyst for Oddfellows, but I could find no photographs of it. I drove to Derbyshire to visit the one bookshop that sold The Drowned Village pamphlet - number 23 in a series on local history - but it was the only one in the series they didn't have. I found a phone number for the writer, but the person who answered said, ‘you mean Donald? He died last week’. Here was a corner of English life that had been lost. It fascinated me.
For The Raven’s Empire, David teamed up with the composer / producer Andrew Phillips (Grasscut) and the Brighton and Hove Concert Band, a 30-piece brass, woodwind and percussion ensemble. Together they give the album a sound that might best be described as domestic grandeur, notably in the track We Will Be Here. Two years ago I went visiting utopian communities, says David of the song’s genesis. There was one in California that got up at 4am to sing chants, and I wanted to create a one-note song built around the rhythm of one particular chant. The result is an eerie, orchestrated drone of a song that is at once creepy and reassuring.
Most of the songs have some sort of connection with death, ghosts and the afterlife. The Day The Devil Slipped Away is about Greg Daville, a late artist friend of David’s from Brighton. You know when you see the back of someone’s head and think it’s someone you know? I’m always doing that with Greg. His presence is still very strong.
Death Won't Have Me is inspired by the word's shortest ghost story: Death And The Gardener by Jean Cocteau. It tells of an Egyptian gardener who sees Death make a menacing gesture. He promptly travels 200 miles to Cairo to escape what he believes is his fate, while his master asks Death: