Mastodon Earthworks - Ritual dust

Earthworks

Fight for the land that feeds you and hold you
Fight alongside its original guardians and spirits
Fight alongside the water and the wind
Fight to keep this sacred land from burning

After more than 5 years spent collecting field recordings and photographs, composing, and performing embryonic versions of these tracks at live shows, Earthworks, the first album from Ritual Dust (aka Lizbeth Poirier), had emerged from the ground, trembling and pulsing to the sound of drums echoing off the carved and painted walls of sacred caves.

Earthworks is a tribute to the Irish landscape and its inhabitants, as well as the many spirits, sacred trees, stones, fields, and rivers and the knowledge they hold. It is pagan folk electronic music, in which old tools converse with the new. Sampled folk strings, Irish bones, uilleann pipes, and a bodhran interplay and coalesce with synthesized drones, heavy techno rhythms, and field recordings taken at ancient sacred sites and bogs in Ireland. The songs vary from deep and subterranean to psychedelic and uplifting.

So crawl out of Oweynagat cave, covered in dirt and transformed. Climb the hill to the Keshcorran Caves and join in a chant as the shadows of ancestors dance on the walls. Walk the green fields of the Boyne Valley as the sun rises on winter solstice. Take part in a ritual sacrifice in the Carrickynaghtan bog. Listen to the land, allow it to speak through you. We are standing here, us together, ready to build new trackways over this treacherous ground to lead us into the new world.

Not back to the land
Give the land back
Not back to the past
Bring the past forward

Credits

Performed and recorded by Lizbeth Poirier
Mastered by Lyndsie Alguire

Many thanks to Hex Evans, Fae Sirois, Fey Hart, David Graeber, David Wengrow, Manchàn Magan, Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen and Tyson Yunkaporta for supporting and inspiring this work.

Last modified on 2024-12-04, published on 2024-06-01