Brave Timbers - For Every Day You Lost

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips

5...according to our Brian on Fri 17 Sep, 2010.

This extraordinarily lovely CD is the 7th release on Glen Johnson's Second Language imprint. Sarah Kemp plays violin for Last Harbour, Fieldhead & Leeds' cherished Declining Winter amongst others. This solo project sees her create evocative & moving instrumental music that prominently features her sweet, wistful, longing violin embellished with tenor acoustic guitar & occasional piano. It largely falls into the realms of neo-classical loveliness but I think I'd describe this beauty more as pastoral chamber folk. It sounds distinctly English, conjuring images of dusty country lanes, woodland nature, fields and trees being buffered by strong breezes. There shouldn't be a soul about to disturb a thing as you sink into the majestic warmth of these tunes. There is a slight air of melancholy to the music but also a wide-eyed wonderment. Snippets of playful, crackly dialogue can suddenly interrupt a song, there the playing becoming more jaunty & innocent. 'For Every Day You Lost' is a modern treasure. It really warms my cockles that we sell music like this. A cherishable escape from the modern world, tenderly played, expertly crafted. Lovely packaging too & we have an EXCLUSIVE bonus 3" CD with remixes by Epic 45, Declining Winter & many others. It's called 'Woodwork' and won't be about for long. Definitely one for fans of Rachels et al.

To play these clips you need to either update your browser (Norman Records recommends Google Chrome) or update your Flash plugin.

Brave Timbers is the performing and recording alias of Newcastle upon Tyne-based multi-instrumentalist Sarah Kemp, an in-demand violinist and esteemed contributor to a number of notable musical ensembles and their recordings, including much-admired works by The Declining Winter, Fieldhead, Lanterns On The Lake, Anna Kashfi and Last Harbour. The debut brave timbers album follows a memorable contribution to Second Language’s 2010 Music & Migration compilation.For Every Day You Lost proffers a delightfully drowsy procession of mellifluous, melancholy-tinged instrumental vignettes for violin, tenor guitar and piano, all of it played by Sarah. It’s an album whose sustained reflective mood and keening chamber arrangements conjure a bewitching, immersive sound world that will immediately appeal to fans of Rachel’s, Balmorhea and Dakota Suite.Sarah’s influences are broad and innumerable, but she acknowledges the importance to the brave timbers sound of Seefeel, Brian Eno’s ambient works, Stars Of The Lid, Low, Peter Broderick, Ólafur Arnalds and Wim Mertens, as well as that of “growing up in the North East, living on the coast, and friends I’ve played violin with in different northern cities...”The album owes its genesis to Second Language’s man in Copenhagen, Martin Holm. “I was playing with Fieldhead in Denmark and Sweden”, Sarah recalls, “…that’s where we met Martin who asked me to contribute a track for Music & Migration, which I did. Then Second Language asked if I’d be up for making an album, so I set about it pretty quickly.”Indeed, For Every day You Lost was cut over two weekends last spring (at the Cambridge home studio of Tracey Browne, the album’s co-producer, and at Airtight Studios in Manchester) and mixed on a third. “A lot of the tracks were improvised… some stemmed from ideas I’d had in my head; most just developed as I recorded them”, says Sarah. “That’s how I wanted it to be – a very organic, natural sound. Sometimes when people spend too long reworking tracks they become dissipated; I didn’t want that. Also, I wanted to know that I could replicate the album live as truly as possible. I prefer things to be more stripped down and intimate sounding, with space for the listener to really hear each note and to maybe focus on a different line each time they listen to it.”brave timbers will be playing debut live shows in the wake of the album’s release, including a support slot with Icelandic quartet Amiina in Antwerp in September, with further European dates set to follow.

Tracklisting:

1. More Like The Oak Than The Willow 2. All The Things You Couldn’t Say 3. Out With The Tide 4. I’ll Always Come Back to This Place 5. Scotland, 19506. Forgotten Bloodlines 7. Hold Onto My Words 8. Two Sisters 9. For Every Day You Lost 10. You’ll Never Be The Same Again 11. Shelter Here

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!