First off:

Hurdy Gurdy - Prototyp

SO. FREAKING. BADASS. Oh my god.

The other day, msandromeda posted a clip of someone playing a hurdy gurdy, and well, I have a thing for medieval music, see? (Not that I know much about it, mind.) And I really dig hurdy gurdy music, especially. So it suddenly occurs to me, hey, wonder if I'd find anything good just plugging "hurdy gurdy" into the pirate bay? And that album was one of the first to come up.

It's commonly said that the hurdy gurdy was the medieval synthesizer, and I guess these guys wanted to prove it. These two pro-hurdy gurdy players, Stefan Brisland-Ferner and Hållbus Totte Mattson, have created some kind of crazy medieval/techno/industrial fusion, entirely using sounds generated from the hurdy gurdies. The result is eerie, layered and complex, and infinitely catchy. Many of the tracks are based on traditional Swedish folk songs, but fuck me if I could even guess which ones (although I'm assuming the ones titled in English are not, natch).

One thing that strikes me about this music is that it's very black and white and grey, very chilly, with only a few flashes of color here and there. Most music has a particular color scheme for me (and hurdy gurdy music is usually shades of green,) and I wouldn't even expect to like something so monochromatic, but... well, suffice it to say this album is awesome.

So awesome my head exploded. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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Second off:

Can anyone point me toward some good medieval flute music? I needs it, the precious, for inspiration for the pied piper story. I am having no luck finding it on my own. The type of flute does not matter. It also does not necessarily need to be European flute music, as long as it is early flute music.