Meet Craven
Elian Moisey
Having taken the scenic route to folk balladry, Elian Moisey is now equally at home with unaccompanied voices in harmony as with building layers of sound for the voice to sit within.
Their starting point was strings: first the violin, before finding a comfortable home with the double bass, and then exploring further into early music on the viola da gamba. They developed an interest in temperament and counterpoint, as well as the appreciation of strange and unexpected sounds that have been prized throughout history. Parallel to their instrumental development, they acquired an enthusiasm for traditional balladry and the voices, words, and tunes of each generation collected and recorded with their own methods and idiosyncrasies - digital, tape, wax cylinder, and pen and paper.
Their musical enquiries stretch forward as well as back, with electronically processed and synthesised sound being the basis for some of their work outside Craven, chiefly their collaboration as half of exploratory duo Arbouring. Here, they use a combination of tape manipulated sound and digital effects to recombine and reconfigure collections of sounds as building the blocks of their arrangements, but always keeping the traditional material as the start and end point.
Will Bremner
Will Bremner is a musician carving out a niche in traditional folk music by bringing together a broad range of seemingly disparate influences, and making unexpected musical connections. Will’s musical voice is influenced by the raw energy of 70’s and 80’s UK punk and post punk; the unrestrained joyous performance of highlife and afro-beat; the boundary pushing sound design and innovation in musical form of experimental hip-hop and prog rock; and the repeated ostinati and rhythmic complexity of West African music, especially the Kora playing griots of Gambia.
All of these influences are forced through the lens of a melodeon/diatonic button accordion player whose introduction to folk music was through the medium of Morris Dancing. Joining a Morris side at the age of 9, Will didn’t pick up the melodeon until age 21 when a tear in their patella tendon meant they had to give their award winning dance career a break. Their entrance into the folk music community at this time created a huge shift in their life, as they abandoned their classical bassoon studies in pursuit of the joy and expression of folk music.
Now a mainstay of the Bristol folk dance and music scene, Will dances both Morris and rapper regularly. They also perform in their own ceilidh band Bearpit, and help to run the Greenbank Folk Club. When not performing, Will moonlights as the in-house graphic designer for both Craven and the Greenbank Folk Club, developing the respective brands and aesthetics of each.
Rhiannon Takel
Rhiannon Takel is a fiddle player, mandolist, composer, voice coach and singer originally from south Wales. Her introduction to folk music came at an early age, growing up hearing and singing many of the songs that still have pride of place in her repertoire today.
Rhiannon’s musical journey took her on from traditional music into fronting punk bands in her teens, before strangely enough depositing her in the world of classical music. There, she fell in love with gut strings and became interested in baroque and early music.
As an instrumentalist and a singer, her approach is visceral, exploring light and shade, tension and texture.