felicity ford - fermenting madder

from framework500 by various artists

/

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • limited edition 3xCDR set
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    housed in a beautiful origami sleeve made from locally produced recycled stock from the räpina paberivabrik and letterpressed on the historical machines at studio.tartuensis

    Includes unlimited streaming of framework500 via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

about

In this recording you can hear fermentation taking place in a saucepan full of madder root and water. This saucepan and its contents have been resting on a stove for several days, having been used to dye skeins of woollen yarn a succession of red and pink shades. The tiny fizzes and pops inside the pan are a result of the ancient chemistry of the madder vat.

Madder – Rubia tinctorum – is an old dyestuff; evidence of its use in textile production dates back to the third millennium BCE. It grows in an untidy and prickly mass of creeping vines and its flowers are very tiny and yellow. The roots - when unearthed - are a glorious burnished tawny red shade, brittle, succulent, and deep-running. When slowly dried in an oven, the smell of these roots is not unlike that of baking beetroot.

To get the best colours from this plant, the harvested roots are dried and crushed, then soaked and heated in water with the addition of a little chalk powder. This mildly alkaline solution is never raised above 60 degrees centigrade because above this temperature the pigments begin to break down, turning a dirty brown shade and losing some of their pleasing rosiness and luminosity.

Once prepared like this, and used for dyeing, the precious madder roots begin to ferment. For however much you wash the madder roots, some of the microbes from the soil remain, and because they are never boiled, they begin to make their magical fizz in the long warm days between dyeing.

This recording took five years to make:

- madder seeds planted in Reading, UK, in 2007.
- madder roots harvested and dried in 2011.
- madder roots used in a wool dyeing workshop at MoKS in 2012.

In the microcosm of the saucepan with its fermenting contents, the world around with its birds and people is also heard. Recorded with binaural microphones suspended inside the pan.

www.knitsonik.com

credits

from framework500, released April 6, 2015

license

tags

about

framework editions image

framework editions Estonia

framework editions is the publishing face of framework radio, which has been broadcasting and acting as a voice for the field recording community since 2002. framework is consecrated to field recording, and its use in composition. field recording, phonography, the art of sound hunting. open your ears and listen! ... more

contact / help

Contact framework editions

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like fermenting madder, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featured guests are the golden-voiced Baby Rose and psyche soulsters Brainstory.
listen now