Premiere: Lisa Knapp’s Black Horse Gets Spooky Video
Returning folk diva’s Lal Waterson cover beguiles, aurally and visually.
BRITISH FOLK ODDBALL Lisa Knapp unveils an eldritch promo film for her cover of Lal Waterson’s Black Horse off her current album, Hidden Seam. It’s an exclusive premiere, just for MOJO. Building from a curious, skeletal soundbed by Knapp’s husband-collaborator Gerry Diver into a fugue of layered Knapps – plus a spectral answer-vocal from the estimable James Yorkston – Black Horse evokes the supernatural tropes of English folk, probing the permeable fabric between this world and others. The hidden seam? Perhaps.
It’s a typically quirky exploration by an artist who’s been compared with Björk as often as she is to Britain’s great folk divas, and the film – shot by film-makers On-Par and featuring Knapp herself in the female lead – has a whiff of the classic British lo-fi ghost story: Hammer Horror via Kill List with a faint sub-note of Rentaghost.
Watch it now.
Hidden Seam features guest spots by Martin Carthy and Kathryn Williams and follows Knapp’s 2007 debut, Wild And Undaunted, a MOJO Folk Album Of The Year. She contributes to a tribute to Bert Jansch at London’s Royal Festival Hall on December 3.