Temple of Shibboleth

Temple of Shibboleth is the extraordinary all-female project founded by singer/multi-instrumentalist Billie Bottle, currently recording their second album. Bottle’s palmarés is impressive: Qadesh’s little-known 11-minute epic 'Ilmarinen’s Fruitless Wooing', for Billie “definitely the most prog thing I’ve done”, and a key role in helping to curate Caravan’s Dave Sinclair’s Noughties solo albums.

“In my head there's something of stardom about the Canterbury scene but every point of contact I have with it feels so normal and human. There is such a delicacy about Dave's talent: he has this amazing intuitive connection with music and the piano in particular.”

Billie’s subsequent solo career has produced increasingly conceptual albums, whilst being unexpectedly headhunted, alongside Martine Waltier, for BBC’s ‘The Voice', a high-octane strummed version of Snap’s 'The Power', in Billie’s words “disrupting the mainstream – it was extremely playful.”

Shibboleth is something else again – a bizarre alternative reality conceived during 2020’s COVID incarceration when Billie was a full-time carer. She explains its origins:

“It’s structured around the ancient art of traditional housekeeping, where each day of the week has a particular purpose and function.” The apparent triviality of chores such as 'The Mending' or 'Ironing Days' (which features the sublime bass of Caravan’s Richard Sinclair), mask complex music performed via a range of organic instruments. Bottle plays keyboards, bass and guitar, whilst other members’ command of sax, flute, bassoon and cello reflects her long association with Mike Westbrook.

Was the concept a reaction to lockdown madness? “I suppose my intention wasn't escapist. It was more that its roots were in the fact that everything's broken, and what have we still got to hang things on?”.

“I plotted this kind of matrix that each day was named alongside the chakras - alongside different notes of a scale from an old Kepler book which essentially says that each different planets has a resonance.” Connections are made to associated colours, ancient gods and even ‘familiars’ - hence Shibboleth, the Shetland pony who presides over the whole concept.

Shibboleth became an unlikely internet distraction, where Bottle encouraged fans to celebrate the mundanity of their everyday activities: “it became a kind of haven for other lost creatives”, whilst steadily drip-feeding new music including the glorious earworm 'Black Swan'. For fans of the Canterbury scene there are subtle references: 'The Mead' alludes to teapots, set against a swirling Gongscape, whilst elsewhere musical humour is channelled, Hatfield-style, in the manic washing machine cycle of 'The Wash'. Shibboleth is playful, discordant, or, during the astonishing choral piece 'Cantus', simply beautiful.

2023’s debut album has been followed by highly theatrical live performances radiating out from their native Devon. As for the forthcoming album, 'In The Shadow': “It's much less humorous: the dark side of the self, where the self is as large as the earth or as small as one person. It tells the story of Shibboleth’s birth. It's kind of a creation story in that sense.”

Will we be any less baffled? Perhaps not, but expect to be royally entertained…

- Phil Howitt

Prog File

Line-up: Billie Bottle (voice/keys/guitars/bass/soap/iron/kettle/hoover/hammer), Viv Goodwin-Darke (voice, flute, recorder, ‘cello), Roz Harding (alto sax, recorder, voice), Anna Batson (bassoon, baritone sax, voice), Emma Holbrook/Jo Meikle (drums)

Sounds like: A mythic ritual of Canterbury-tinged prog, art-pop, lyrical folk and pure improv. Deep, witty and humorously spiritual.

Current Release: In The Shadow (single) is out now via Bandcamp along with debut album ‘Temple of Shibboleth’. Forthcoming album, //In The Shadow// will be released this Autumn 2026 with an accompanying tour.

Websites:https://billiebottle.bandcamp.com/ & Temple of Shibboleth