(Test Dept / Brith Gof)

MOP 4 - Ministry of Power, LP/CD (Vinyl version includes a 24-page booklet with details on the various European performances)

Gododdin, a collaboration with kindred spirits in the form of Welsh avant-garde theatre company Brith Gof. Performed in Wales, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Scotland, this was a dramatisation of the annihilation of a small Celtic army by the invading Angle's at Catraeth in 600 A.D. A critically acclaimed spectacler using a huge performance space, a large cast, and specially designed set from Cliff McLucas (now sadly deceased). It premiered at the abandoned Rover car factory in Cardiff, transformed using 600 tons of sand, 50 trees, 30 wrecked cars and a set that flooded as the performance progressed. Brith Gof provided music and voice, accompanying their movement, while TD provided a blend of percussion and bagpipes enhanced with physical performance.

Brith Gof:
John E R Hardy (composition / production / trumpet / horns / cornetto); Lis Hughes Jones (vocals / adaptation of the poem); Margaret Ames, Alun Elidyr, Mike Pearson, Marc Rees, Nic Ros, Sera Williams (additional voices)

Gododdin* was the brainchild of Welsh language theatre company Brith Gof (an idiom meaning faint recollection), its aim was to create vibrant performance which mirrored the experience and aspirations of a minority culture. Using the poem Y Gododdin as inspiration, the earliest poem in the Welsh language, it tells the fate of 300 Celtic warriors who set out to defend their homeland from 100,000 invading Angles around 600 A.D. They are only remembered through the survival of one epic poem. Defeat is never to be cherished but the glorious rendering of their account against an infinetely stronger enemy lessens the smugness of victory and lends dignity in retrospect to the vanquished. Culture then as now becomes a tool for survival. There is nothing marginal about the issues at stake. The right to self determination, the growth and celebration of native language, looking back further than 'pop'culture; making huge visions concrete and breathing life back into characterswho, like so many were destroyed when a race first began to flex their colonial muscles. The intention of the performance was to reaffirm the energy, optimism, and dynamism of the last great flowering of Celtic Society.

"...you just know that something very special is going to happen. And of course it does..." (NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS)

* (pronounced Godoth-een)