Artist description A wild bunch of hedonists playing original material,written themselves, for dancing, leaping up and downto, or just sitting and relaxing to.Deep rich harmonies and driving rhythm mixing together to form an unforgetable earthy sound.

Music Style Folk/Dance :- Contempory

Musical Influences Folk, Rock, Classical,African,etc

Artist History Formed in 1997 by Max and her husband(and one time band member)Bill and picking up the others at sessions along the way.

Group Members We have Four members:- Dominic Allan playing Border Bagpipes and Bass Clarinet, Simon Raine playing Octave Bazouki,Bass, Guitar and Percussion, Dave Rowlands playing Border Bagpipes and Recorder, Max Sweatman playing Hurdy-gurdy.

Press Reviews "Their repotoire has a high proportion of self-penned tunes......played with plenty of light and shade, great drive and a sense of power. I was impressed" George Featherston. Chanter( the journal of the Bagpipe Society) "Yes i know it isn't electronic, but who cares. This is some really good music" mp3.com/digitalsunshine "Resistance is useless- wonderful trance-dance tune""Building Bridges,Hecate's- The Black Heart of Innocence, use with care" mp3.com/pagancircle Citizen Camembert "Anchovy Cappuccino" Label: Ectomantography; ECTOCD 001; 2000; Playing time: 43.20 min With two bagpipers and a hurdy gurdy in a line-up of four, Citizen Camembert threatens drone overkill. If that idea doesn't fill you with dread, though, and you don't mind listening to all-instrumental dance music at home, you're in for a treat here! The CD is a small-budget production but offers professional sound quality and an enjoyable selection of self-penned dance tunes. Arrangements are more varied than the first sentence might have suggested: Dominic Allen plays bagpipes, but also bass clarinet and bouzouki; Dave Rowlands contributes bagpipes and recorder, Max Sweatman hurdy gurdy and Simon Raine adds a solid grounding of bouzouki, guitar, bass guitar and percussion to the mix. The album can be ordered via the Citizen Camembert homepage. Anja Beinroth "Folkworld Magazine" CITIZEN Camembert is an excellent name for a band operating in the idiom ofAngIo-French, pipes and hurdy gurdy-led music, but memories of Kenneth Williams ("I'm Citizen Camembert! I'm the big Cheese!") may lead one to expect a disc full of frivolity. In fact, most of the ten tracks on "Anchovy Cappuccino" are in dark, intense minor keys and modes. Low D pipes - Swaynes I presume - feature on the majority of pieces and the two players, Dominic Alien and Dave Rowlands, take the instrument smoothly through its entire overblown range. Some of the tunes are quite technical too, making the piping performances pretty impressive. Dominic also adds bouzouki and, on a fair number of tracks, the bass clarinet. Dave doubles on recorder, and its high tessitura helps to add tonal variety on an album dominated by lower sonorities. The other players are Max Sweatman on hurdy gurdy and Simon Raine on bouzouki, guitar, bass guitar and percussion. All the numbers are penned by members of the band and some of the titles are entertainingly inscrutable - "4 Faces of Ecto" (an opener with a suitable fanfare feel), "5 Days of Epac" and "Resistance is Useless". Pipes enter on track 2, "End of An Era", a flowing, soulful tune that builds up nicely, from the pen of Dave Rowlands. "Hound of the Baskervilles" and "Wicker Man" are two tracks which reflect the slightly gothick feel that pervades the disc. "Wicker Man" was presumably inspired by the cult film of that name and its processional feel and alternations between minor and major seem to evoke the fatal end to the movie, when Edward Woodward is forced to morris dance his way to a fiery doom. There is something a little filmic too about the Allan/Raine composition "5 Days of Epac". This is one of the few major key numbers, in waltz time and with some nice harmonic surprises in the B music and effective pipe harmonies. To me it has a French movie soundtrack feel. Similarly evocative is the attractive final track, "Languedoc", a fine tune with some startling hurdy gurdy chromatics at one point. The disc could have done with a little greater variety of tempo and modality.And two consecutive tunes, "Hanter Mouth" and "Hound of the Baskervilles" are rather too similar in feel; they could have been separated. Citizen Camembert are one of a cluster of bands making interesting original music using acoustic instruments and inspired by a wide range of European influences, with some jazz overtones. "Anchovy Cappuccino" is a disc that all enthusiasts for this intriguing new/old idiom will want to listen to. William Marshall "The Bagpipe Society"

Location Worthing, West Susex - United Kingdom

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