The Travellers Rammed-Earth Colour Palette [1]

Rammed-Earth Design – The Elusive Palette

Ahhh yeah – pleasin’ some people ain’ easy – izit?

Guess it never was, although my memories of the 80’s, though somewhat sullen with a descent into the Thatcher/Reaganist austerity abyss [in which we still wallow and are shortly to be subsumed], beer-culture and causeless rebellion – was still percolating, nay, redolent with ideas of escape, liberation, breakthrough consciousness and the dirty expletive of ‘rugged individualism’.

Phew – when I think of the characters I met, well, that was a different world, i.e., a world full of difference quite unlike the keyboard kompromat. cell phone zombie, genius in their own mind contingents that inundate the anti-social horizon.

Mind you a huge hug and respek to all the brave souls out there protesting for Gaza’s liberation, almost makes ya feel like the last 40 years o’ fighting da system was worthit, right!

Those were the musically heady days of Walter Carlos, Deuter, Klaus Schulze, Kitaro, Robert Shroeder, Bill Nelson, Howard Jones, Thomas Dolby and Peter Schilling – don’t matter if you don’t know ‘em, you’d need a next level audio system to fathom the genius and astralised joy packed into these dimension altering sonic talismans – that is unless you have the rare and precarious acuity of a Saraswatic nada yogi, like someone I had the good fortune of connecting with many moons passed – but that’s another story.

I know, more esoteric gibberish than you can toss a jade moebius strip at...shame init!

BUT WAIT!

Did you say c-o-n-f-o-r-m?

Fer chrissake, the clues ‘r in the first 3 letters...freedom an’ conformity don’t mix – get it?

Now, where was I before I was so crudely interrupted?

Was it the Rammed-Earth colour palette, perchance?

So it was, and so it is, but what has all this stream of consciousness ramble-ranting got to do with a rammed-earth colour palette? A lot really, and certainly no less than crediting the 2 pieces of music chosen for the occasion.

No. 1 is the (pop) musical savant who captured the zeitgeist of that period, Howard Jones. The piece, Hide ‘n Seek is imho (OK less o’ the humble, eh – wha’evva...), captures the tone, the pitch, the dare I say, ‘frequency’ of the many spiritual and politico-philosophical nomads that littered the populace in that perennial period of rediscovery along with the New Romantics and White magicians that seemed to lurk ‘round every corner (an’ I ain’t talkin’ skin tone).

Holdovers from the 60’s – well – maybe, but what we into is much older than’at, jus’ so’s ya know...

Those who dared or cared were immersed in ‘l'âge d'or de la spiritualité’, which Mr Jones expressed in tones animated, insightful, emotionally intelligent and with peerless inquisitivity – those were the days... [of serious inquiry].

And what of my risque sekin’ choyse?

Sailor, no less. Yes, yes, the 70’s sea-fairing cads and bounders, those hedonistic devotees of hopeless nostalgia and romance that slapped the MI5 promulgated feminists in the face by plying the hit single, “Girls, girls, girls”, and boy was it gloriously decadent.

‘Jacaranda’, the mesmerisingly exotic piece that follows Hide ‘n Seek, is the flip side to that Bacchanalian chart topper, which somehow and circum-circuituously brings me again back to the rammed-earth colour palette that accompanies these sonographic intrigues.

The images in the ‘colour palette’, are not being used because they represent prime examples of rammed-earth objet d’art, but largely to express the simple variability and range of colour and ‘banding’ that many have opted for with their initial builds.

Zealously using natural materials and dyes in our work greatly limits availability, adds time and cost to the process and yet, many insist on just that – a colour and banding schema to ‘live’ for. Still this presentation serves and recognises that not everyone has the desire or need for n’th degree exotica - having rammed-earth walls are already a satiating leap in that direction.

We will, as the last slide explains, be presenting ‘state of the artisan’ walls, colours and banding examples in latter offerings, for now I hope this unlikely combination of left-field whackiness satisfies that ‘lesser’ well travelled palate.

Well, ya knows hows it is ... ya ain’t reelly lived till ya mixed a few metaphors : )

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