The Mummers
Encyclopedia
--93.97.101.13 11:31, 20 November 2011 (UTC)'The Mummers' are a band based in the English
seaside town of Brighton
, centred around London-born singer/songwriter Raissa Khan-Panni, composer Mark Horwood (before his suicide in September 2009),http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4635991.Brighton_musician_found_hanged/'Mummers musician found hanged', The Argus, 18 September 2009 producer/writer Paul Sandrone and co-producer/manager Alastair Cunningham. They take their name 'Mummers' from the medieval performing troupes who would go from door-to-door wearing masks and costumes, staging plays in rhyme and song and mime.
Biography=
Khan-Panni, once better known as Raissa
, is a singer whose origins include English, Chinese, Indian, and Mexican. She was raised in the South London district of West Norwood
, and as a child studied classical music, learning the piano
and then oboe
. She spent her school-days busking
in Leicester Square and later all over Europe, before returning to study music in Bristol
. In 2000 she enjoyed critical acclaim across the media spectrum, most notably with the album Believer released by Polydor Records
and the single "How Long Do I Get" which was played extensively on UK radio stations.
Despite the acclaim, by 2001 the solo projects were winding down and Khan-Panni returned to work, waitressing full-time in a Brixton
restaurant.
She describes this period as "a time of having nothing again" when, after several years of excitement, she returned to the mundane and the ordinary.
However, she was still writing lyrics which began by documenting this period of her life but soon spun out to a fantasy world as her mind wandered while working.http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/20/popandrock-mummers interview in The Guardian During this time Khan-Panni remained in close contact with her manager and co-creator of The Mummers Alastair Cunningham, and Paul Sandrone, a collaborator during her time recording as Raissa, and the trigger for the formation of The Mummers came when Sandrone passed a recording to orchestral composer Mark Horwood, who was living on the South Coast in a treehouse studio just outside Chichester
. Horwood composed a soundtrack around Khan-Panni's lyrics, but then moved to Los Angeles
to work on a film soundtrack without leaving contact details. It was a year before Khan-Panni finally met Horwood, who was now living near Brighton
, and the layered, orchestral sound of The Mummers, at that time still nameless, rapidly emerged.
'Tale To Tell'=
The name of the band was inspired by their ever-changing cast of 20 musicians from around the Brighton area that Khan-Panni, Sandrone and Horwood assembled to begin recording their first album in Horwood's treehouse studio. With co-producer Alastair Cunningham, the project took two years to complete, and was released as Tale to Tell in April 2009. It is a lushly orchestrated fantasia, inspired by "marching bands, big bands and fairgrounds" and featuring the sound of a brass band
, string quartet
, orchestra
, and the Moog Synthesiser. It was also heavily influenced by John Barry
's filmscores for James Bond
and the MGM musicals of the 40s and 50s. Rufus Wainwright
's use of Ravel's 'Bolero' in 'O What a World' is also cited as an example. The joint collaboration of Cunningham and Khan-Panni also gave birth to a brand new record label 'Big Bass Drum' which was quickly set up to rush out the album in order to capitalise on sudden unexpected media interest. The Mummers performed two tracks from Tale to Tell, Wonderland and March of the Dawn on the opening show of series 34 of BBC Two
's Later... with Jools Holland,http://www.bbc.co.uk/later/artists/themummers/ Later with Jools Holland while in May 2009 March of the Dawn was iTunes
single of the week.
On 7 September 2009 Mark Horwood committed suicide at his mother's house near Chichester.
'Fade Away' is the second track on the EP, a little-known Todd Rundgren
cover from his album 'The Hermit of Mink Hollow'. Raissa first heard it in a taxi on a trip to Miami in 2009 on the way to meet american hip-hop label SRC Records
(Universal Motown). She says that the sound of it blew her away and lyrically also it seemed to fit in with all the 'surreal things' that were happening around that time. Paul Sandrone was also a fan of the record, so on their return to the UK they decided to cover it and turn it into a glistening Mummers fanfare. They then titled the EP 'Mink Hollow Road' as a homage to the place where Rundgren wrote and recorded 'Fade away', a valley of pine forests in the countryside just outside New York that to Raissa is curiously reminiscent of the coutryside surrounding their former Treehouse studio.
'Driving Home' the third track on the EP was also inspired by the Miami trip. It was the first track where Raissa felt she had the confidence to orchestrate herself, having learned from closely watching Horwood.
The final three tracks use material started with Horwood in 2009.
'Cherry Heart' was originally written for legendary 80s video director Steve Baron's new Sci-fi series 'Slingers' (still in production). The idea is about a girl who wakes up in the 23rd century not realising she's a robot. It invokes the 'Rat Pack
' swing sound of the 1950s with a modern edge.
'Your Voice' uses the original sound of birdsong from the Treehouse with a frail vocal reminiscent of the 40s and 50s.
Ironically 'Stuck in the Middle' was originally written for a friend of Raissa's whose boyfriend had committed suicide.
Mink Hollow Road was released in Jan 2011 on 'Big Bass Drum' to great acclaim, with many reviewers claiming that The Mummers had made a triumphant return to form. After only one live performance at the Jazz Cafe
in London
in June 2010, a UK tour was put together for April 2011.
In February the single 'Fade Away' (released on Feb 8th) was playlisted by BBC Radio 2
.
The Mummers have also embarked on a number of orchestral remixes of other artists' tracks, including the american bands The Black Keys
, Passion Pit
, and French Horn Rebellion. An album of these is being considered for the future.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
seaside town of Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, centred around London-born singer/songwriter Raissa Khan-Panni, composer Mark Horwood (before his suicide in September 2009),http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4635991.Brighton_musician_found_hanged/'Mummers musician found hanged', The Argus, 18 September 2009 producer/writer Paul Sandrone and co-producer/manager Alastair Cunningham. They take their name 'Mummers' from the medieval performing troupes who would go from door-to-door wearing masks and costumes, staging plays in rhyme and song and mime.
Biography=
Khan-Panni, once better known as Raissa
Raissa
Raissa Khan-Panni is an English singer-songwriter who records under the name Raissa. She is best known for the 2000 single, "How Long Do I Get", which was playlisted by UK radio stations. The song reached #47 in the UK Singles Chart.-Biography:...
, is a singer whose origins include English, Chinese, Indian, and Mexican. She was raised in the South London district of West Norwood
West Norwood
West Norwood is a place in the London Borough of Lambeth.It is primarily a residential suburb of south London but with some light industry near Knights Hill in the south....
, and as a child studied classical music, learning the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and then oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
. She spent her school-days busking
Busking
Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...
in Leicester Square and later all over Europe, before returning to study music in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
. In 2000 she enjoyed critical acclaim across the media spectrum, most notably with the album Believer released by Polydor Records
Polydor Records
Polydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
and the single "How Long Do I Get" which was played extensively on UK radio stations.
Despite the acclaim, by 2001 the solo projects were winding down and Khan-Panni returned to work, waitressing full-time in a Brixton
Brixton
Brixton is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth in south London, England. It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
restaurant.
She describes this period as "a time of having nothing again" when, after several years of excitement, she returned to the mundane and the ordinary.
However, she was still writing lyrics which began by documenting this period of her life but soon spun out to a fantasy world as her mind wandered while working.http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/20/popandrock-mummers interview in The Guardian During this time Khan-Panni remained in close contact with her manager and co-creator of The Mummers Alastair Cunningham, and Paul Sandrone, a collaborator during her time recording as Raissa, and the trigger for the formation of The Mummers came when Sandrone passed a recording to orchestral composer Mark Horwood, who was living on the South Coast in a treehouse studio just outside Chichester
Chichester
Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, South-East England. It has a long history as a settlement; its Roman past and its subsequent importance in Anglo-Saxon times are only its beginnings...
. Horwood composed a soundtrack around Khan-Panni's lyrics, but then moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to work on a film soundtrack without leaving contact details. It was a year before Khan-Panni finally met Horwood, who was now living near Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, and the layered, orchestral sound of The Mummers, at that time still nameless, rapidly emerged.
'Tale To Tell'=
The name of the band was inspired by their ever-changing cast of 20 musicians from around the Brighton area that Khan-Panni, Sandrone and Horwood assembled to begin recording their first album in Horwood's treehouse studio. With co-producer Alastair Cunningham, the project took two years to complete, and was released as Tale to Tell in April 2009. It is a lushly orchestrated fantasia, inspired by "marching bands, big bands and fairgrounds" and featuring the sound of a brass band
Brass band
A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands , but are usually more correctly termed military bands, concert...
, string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
, orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
, and the Moog Synthesiser. It was also heavily influenced by John Barry
John Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
's filmscores for James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
and the MGM musicals of the 40s and 50s. Rufus Wainwright
Rufus Wainwright
Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. He has recorded six albums of original music, EPs, and tracks on compilations and film soundtracks.-Early years:...
's use of Ravel's 'Bolero' in 'O What a World' is also cited as an example. The joint collaboration of Cunningham and Khan-Panni also gave birth to a brand new record label 'Big Bass Drum' which was quickly set up to rush out the album in order to capitalise on sudden unexpected media interest. The Mummers performed two tracks from Tale to Tell, Wonderland and March of the Dawn on the opening show of series 34 of BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
's Later... with Jools Holland,http://www.bbc.co.uk/later/artists/themummers/ Later with Jools Holland while in May 2009 March of the Dawn was iTunes
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
single of the week.
On 7 September 2009 Mark Horwood committed suicide at his mother's house near Chichester.
Mink Hollow Road EP
With the band in shock, all engagements were cancelled and a period of contemplation sent the band into what Raissa calls a 'cocoon period' It was during this time that the first tentative recordings for their next EP 'Mink Hollow Road' were created, and after an initial 'darker' direction they eventually emerged with a sound even more lush, joyous and uplifting than before, continuing on from the style they had created with 'Tale to Tell'. The first completed track was 'Call me a Rainbow', about a euphoric feeling of being suspended in mid-air looking down at the world beneath. Raissa herself says this was the first song she was happy with after Mark's death and continuing the themes of 'Tale to Tell', it was again a reaction to reality, and a way of trying to make things better.'Fade Away' is the second track on the EP, a little-known Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Todd Rundgren's career has produced a diverse range of recordings...
cover from his album 'The Hermit of Mink Hollow'. Raissa first heard it in a taxi on a trip to Miami in 2009 on the way to meet american hip-hop label SRC Records
SRC Records
SRC Records is an American record label created by former Loud Records CEO Steve Rifkind. It is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group and is distributed through Universal Republic Records.-Company history:...
(Universal Motown). She says that the sound of it blew her away and lyrically also it seemed to fit in with all the 'surreal things' that were happening around that time. Paul Sandrone was also a fan of the record, so on their return to the UK they decided to cover it and turn it into a glistening Mummers fanfare. They then titled the EP 'Mink Hollow Road' as a homage to the place where Rundgren wrote and recorded 'Fade away', a valley of pine forests in the countryside just outside New York that to Raissa is curiously reminiscent of the coutryside surrounding their former Treehouse studio.
'Driving Home' the third track on the EP was also inspired by the Miami trip. It was the first track where Raissa felt she had the confidence to orchestrate herself, having learned from closely watching Horwood.
The final three tracks use material started with Horwood in 2009.
'Cherry Heart' was originally written for legendary 80s video director Steve Baron's new Sci-fi series 'Slingers' (still in production). The idea is about a girl who wakes up in the 23rd century not realising she's a robot. It invokes the 'Rat Pack
Rat Pack
The Rat Pack was a group of actors originally centered on Humphrey Bogart. In the mid-1960s it was the name used by the press and the general public to refer to a later variation of the group, after Bogart's death, that called itself "the summit" or "the clan," featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean...
' swing sound of the 1950s with a modern edge.
'Your Voice' uses the original sound of birdsong from the Treehouse with a frail vocal reminiscent of the 40s and 50s.
Ironically 'Stuck in the Middle' was originally written for a friend of Raissa's whose boyfriend had committed suicide.
Mink Hollow Road was released in Jan 2011 on 'Big Bass Drum' to great acclaim, with many reviewers claiming that The Mummers had made a triumphant return to form. After only one live performance at the Jazz Cafe
Jazz Café
The Jazz Café is a music venue in Parkway in Camden Town, London, England. It opened in 1990, in the former premises of Barclays Bank, and has been run by Mean Fiddler Music Group since 1992, now a subsidiary of the MAMA Group.-History:...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in June 2010, a UK tour was put together for April 2011.
In February the single 'Fade Away' (released on Feb 8th) was playlisted by BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
.
The Mummers have also embarked on a number of orchestral remixes of other artists' tracks, including the american bands The Black Keys
The Black Keys
The Black Keys are an American rock duo consisting of vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer/producer Patrick Carney. The band was formed in Akron, Ohio, in 2001. As of October 2011, the band has sold over 2 million albums in the U.S....
, Passion Pit
Passion Pit
Passion Pit is an American electropop band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The group, which formed in 2007, consists of Michael Angelakos , Ian Hultquist , Ayad Al Adhamy , Jeff Apruzzese and Nate Donmoyer...
, and French Horn Rebellion. An album of these is being considered for the future.