The second piece completed for “The Lincolnshire Suite” was the track “The Windmill”.

When I was youngster we seemed to visit a lot of windmills. Looking back I suppose that the seventies in particular saw a bit of a sea change as windmills became tourist destinations rather than working mills. I know our nearest one North Leverton was restored and reopened in 1972. The year of my birth.

I fondly remember visiting Leverton mill pretty regularly in the 70s and 80s, and being fascinated by the workings of the mill, the clanks and whirrs of the machinery, the smell of flour, wood and oil. I remember climbing the big ladders, through the narrow trapdoors up to the top of the mill, and looking out of the small windows at the great view over the fields of Nottinghamshire. Constantly reminded to “be careful” by my parents, aware of the danger of the machinery and trapdoors but excited by the prospect of “peril”.

We always came back with a bag or two of flour whenever we visited a Mill. It was fascinating to see the process of how the flour was made too, and there was always an older Miller there who was more than happy to answer any questions I had. I actually remember the man in the newspaper article being at the Leverton mill when we used to go.

Lincolnshire, perhaps because of its geography, seemed to have a higher proportion of Windmills than other areas. I wonder if this is also due to the influx of Dutch drainage specialists (some of whom are my own ancestors, the Ellanders) who came over to drain the fens in the 17th Century. Gainsborough my home town had 9 mills in its heyday and many more in the surrounding villages. Most of these were in disrepair or converted to houses by the time of my youth. One of the mills was very famous, as it was the inspiration for George Eliot’s “Mill on the Floss” when she stayed in nearby Morton, something that was widely celebrated in the town.

Another mill I remember from trips out was the rather unusual eight sailed mill at Heckington. I think it’s the only one of its kind in the UK.

The mill that features in the song is the one at Alford, just north of Skegness. The footage and audio in the song came from the same 1970s/80s promotional video for Lincolnshire I used for the “Straight Furrows” track. I found the idea of a windmill calmly turning at its own pace in the countryside being the antithesis of dirty, grimy city life strangely alluring and it conjured up my own memories of Alford, especially when I watched the other Alford footage and saw the morris dancers.

We used to call at Alford quite a lot, usually after a visit to Woodall Spa (as mentioned in my previous blog) it was and is a lovely little market town, and it’s famous for its craft fair and its folk festival. The latter of which I have visited a few times over the years. My parents were avid members of the English Folk Dance and Song Society and many of their dates while courting were to folk dances around Lincolnshire and beyond.

After I was born they still continued to attend events with me in tow and knew lots of people on the circuit, I have a pretty vivid memory of morris dancers at Lincoln cathedral and being fascinated by the ‘obby ‘oss. As I was a cute kid I often enjoyed lots of attention from the dancers and soaked up the atmosphere of these events we attended over the years.

As I grew older mum and dad became folk dance organisers, putting their own events on with a primitive karaoke system, my mum taking on the role of the caller, and my dad preparing all the tapes and playing the songs in the right order. They really loved doing it and brought a lot of joy to a lot of people, I tended not to go as much as I reached my teens but still showed my face at a few events, and enjoyed the atmosphere.

“The Windmill” track linked these memories together for me. The track itself came together quite quickly, and was written mainly on the MPC rather than on Ableton, as I was intending to play it live right from its inception. I came up with the nice piano chord progression first jamming around that and then developed the second part with the arpeggio elements in place. Adding a drop which fitted the spoken word elements and allowed the song to build after a slow almost pastoral start. I added some field recordings from inside the windmill of the cogs and wheels turning as I remembered this sound vividly from my childhood.

This track was first played live at Church of Sound in Nottingham and went down very well with the audience.

As I was packing down after the gig Pete Challoner (a great electronic musician himself) asked if I could send him the stems to remix at some point and this sowed a seed that perhaps other people would like to remix the track too. So I prepared a remix kit and sent it out to several of my friends. I ended up with some great reinterpretations from Temple Music, Dan Donovan, Spaceship, Gribbles, Black Tempest and Dave Formula. Many of whom had never remixed before. I was really touched by these remixes and each took the song in a completely different direction, through each persons creative filter. They were a joy to hear.

You can hear all the remixes here:

Finally I edited the video footage to fit the song and added that to YouTube as with the previous song. You can watch that here:

The song has been a crowd favourite when I’ve played it live and it’s always fun to play and definitely one of the highlights of the Lincolnshire Suite for me.

Next up song three…