HOUSE & LAND (self titled)
2017 - Thrill Jockey
This is an incredible album. It is 'timeless' in the sense that it is rare to find a new album that is so completely rooted to those far off days when recording was in its infancy and earlier and yet has a strong feel of modernistic experimentation. In fact it wouldn't be difficult to imagine that this extraordinary recording actually preceded recorded music by a very long time, such is its haunting, eerie, old Appalachian folksiness.
This talented duo consists of Sally Anne Morgan on fiddle, shruti box, banjo and vocals with Sarah Louise Henson on vocals, 12-string guitar, shruti box and bouzouki, along with occasional help from percussionist Thom Nguyen. The instrumentation is sparse, simply being used to accompany these two women's incredible otherworldly voices rather than filling the sound out and adding completely unnecessary colour. It is a recording that is often an exercise in minimalism, but a minimalism that explores the blending of two voices and the few instruments with a strong sense of experimentation to create a unique atmosphere, albeit one that is so incredibly rooted in old timey music and so far beyond as to be untraceable, perhaps even unknowable. Ultimately what is created is an incredibly haunting series of ten songs that are both easy to listen to and intensely challenging but as far away from the 'easy listening' genre as it is possible to get. This is 'country music' in its truest sense and one that is in keeping with a tradition that has been built upon since the earliest immigrants entered the 'New World.' To find the originators of this collection of ten southern hymns and Appalachian ballads we would need to go back further than records (sic) allow ensuring this pair of hugely talented young women is able to treat the songs as if brand new knowing very few listeners will have heard many of them before.
Amongst the descriptive words that spring to mind are 'eerie' and 'otherworldly' when struggling to describe the atmosphere that is created by this recording. So often it has a slightly sinister, perhaps even threatening feel, not in terms of the threat of violence but in the sense that anyone hearing these performances will find the atmosphere that is created is so out of keeping with this 21st century as to be almost unfathomable in its depth. Some songs consist of just voices, with the two women's unaccompanied harmony singing further deepening the strange, eerie otherworldliness that I have yet to hear matched by anyone in the modern day. As I've already said the instrumentation is sparse and never invasive, always leaving space for the vocals to emphasize the unusual atmosphere and provide the focal point of each song. Whilst obscure and ancient British Isles folk songs that over the centuries were taken by the immigrants to Appalachia are always evolving it is almost as if in the case of this duo they have completed the circle and taken them back, at least atmospherically, to the unknown and indeed, unknowable time when the songs were first performed.
A chiming banjo gets Wandering Boy, the first song on the album, off to a classic old rural start before the pairs harmonies start to propel the lyrics, with the paucity of instrumentation highlighting the beguiling almost 'siren' like evocation of this stunningly atmospheric tale. The bouzouki gradually inveigles itself into the mix highlighting the otherworldly atmosphere along with a little restrained percussion. On Guide me O thou great Jehovah a funereal, high lonesome fiddle gets this slow moodily atmospheric hymn off to a start before the incredible a cappela lead and harmony vocals come in creating the atmosphere of a haunting or haunted time long before any potential listeners were born. A gentle acoustic guitar and the lead vocal get things going on The day is past and gone, with an atmospheric restrained percussion adding yet more spookiness, deepened by the gradual insertion of the fiddle, all the time led by the angelic vocal. The percussive beats and fiddle tones gradually build the dramatic quality whilst the beautiful vocal keeps everything grounded and then half way through everything changes. The vocals stop and the 12 string comes in before the vocal joins again with the fiddle and percussion, with the texture and dramatic quality of the song segueing into a different world and texture, ensuring this song is a true epic of experimentation and otherworldly old timieness that gradually builds to a dramatic crescendo. On Rich old jade the Shruti box and bouzouki combine with the lead vocal on a performance that could come from the Appalachia of a century ago were it not for the fact that those two instruments were hardly prolific in that locale back then! It is that experimentation that ensures this recording, whilst rooted centuries ago, has a modernity and a freshness that makes this incredible album stand out a long way from the pack.
It is almost as if these two women have a rural oneness with nature, the recognizable humanity in the songs being suppressed and taken back beyond mere human organized structures to a time when the prime motivation in music was worship and the communication between isolated settlements in bringing news to their worlds. They are seeing how far and how deep, with their experimentation, they can push a pair of voices and a sparse and unusual instrumentation whilst remaining rooted in a rural ages old folksiness.
In the creation of this recording I suspect the duo have achieved their aim and in fact succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in trying to see how far into the modern day they could stretch these incredibly old styles and make them more palatable to modern tastes. I've said it once and I'll say it again; this is an extraordinary recording and one that deserves to be heard by the music consuming masses. Whether it will be has to be very dependent on promotion and the public's ability to digest something that is totally unique in its conception and fulfillment. One of the most extraordinary albums I have ever heard!
https://houseandland.bandcamp.com/
This is an incredible album. It is 'timeless' in the sense that it is rare to find a new album that is so completely rooted to those far off days when recording was in its infancy and earlier and yet has a strong feel of modernistic experimentation. In fact it wouldn't be difficult to imagine that this extraordinary recording actually preceded recorded music by a very long time, such is its haunting, eerie, old Appalachian folksiness.
This talented duo consists of Sally Anne Morgan on fiddle, shruti box, banjo and vocals with Sarah Louise Henson on vocals, 12-string guitar, shruti box and bouzouki, along with occasional help from percussionist Thom Nguyen. The instrumentation is sparse, simply being used to accompany these two women's incredible otherworldly voices rather than filling the sound out and adding completely unnecessary colour. It is a recording that is often an exercise in minimalism, but a minimalism that explores the blending of two voices and the few instruments with a strong sense of experimentation to create a unique atmosphere, albeit one that is so incredibly rooted in old timey music and so far beyond as to be untraceable, perhaps even unknowable. Ultimately what is created is an incredibly haunting series of ten songs that are both easy to listen to and intensely challenging but as far away from the 'easy listening' genre as it is possible to get. This is 'country music' in its truest sense and one that is in keeping with a tradition that has been built upon since the earliest immigrants entered the 'New World.' To find the originators of this collection of ten southern hymns and Appalachian ballads we would need to go back further than records (sic) allow ensuring this pair of hugely talented young women is able to treat the songs as if brand new knowing very few listeners will have heard many of them before.
Amongst the descriptive words that spring to mind are 'eerie' and 'otherworldly' when struggling to describe the atmosphere that is created by this recording. So often it has a slightly sinister, perhaps even threatening feel, not in terms of the threat of violence but in the sense that anyone hearing these performances will find the atmosphere that is created is so out of keeping with this 21st century as to be almost unfathomable in its depth. Some songs consist of just voices, with the two women's unaccompanied harmony singing further deepening the strange, eerie otherworldliness that I have yet to hear matched by anyone in the modern day. As I've already said the instrumentation is sparse and never invasive, always leaving space for the vocals to emphasize the unusual atmosphere and provide the focal point of each song. Whilst obscure and ancient British Isles folk songs that over the centuries were taken by the immigrants to Appalachia are always evolving it is almost as if in the case of this duo they have completed the circle and taken them back, at least atmospherically, to the unknown and indeed, unknowable time when the songs were first performed.
A chiming banjo gets Wandering Boy, the first song on the album, off to a classic old rural start before the pairs harmonies start to propel the lyrics, with the paucity of instrumentation highlighting the beguiling almost 'siren' like evocation of this stunningly atmospheric tale. The bouzouki gradually inveigles itself into the mix highlighting the otherworldly atmosphere along with a little restrained percussion. On Guide me O thou great Jehovah a funereal, high lonesome fiddle gets this slow moodily atmospheric hymn off to a start before the incredible a cappela lead and harmony vocals come in creating the atmosphere of a haunting or haunted time long before any potential listeners were born. A gentle acoustic guitar and the lead vocal get things going on The day is past and gone, with an atmospheric restrained percussion adding yet more spookiness, deepened by the gradual insertion of the fiddle, all the time led by the angelic vocal. The percussive beats and fiddle tones gradually build the dramatic quality whilst the beautiful vocal keeps everything grounded and then half way through everything changes. The vocals stop and the 12 string comes in before the vocal joins again with the fiddle and percussion, with the texture and dramatic quality of the song segueing into a different world and texture, ensuring this song is a true epic of experimentation and otherworldly old timieness that gradually builds to a dramatic crescendo. On Rich old jade the Shruti box and bouzouki combine with the lead vocal on a performance that could come from the Appalachia of a century ago were it not for the fact that those two instruments were hardly prolific in that locale back then! It is that experimentation that ensures this recording, whilst rooted centuries ago, has a modernity and a freshness that makes this incredible album stand out a long way from the pack.
It is almost as if these two women have a rural oneness with nature, the recognizable humanity in the songs being suppressed and taken back beyond mere human organized structures to a time when the prime motivation in music was worship and the communication between isolated settlements in bringing news to their worlds. They are seeing how far and how deep, with their experimentation, they can push a pair of voices and a sparse and unusual instrumentation whilst remaining rooted in a rural ages old folksiness.
In the creation of this recording I suspect the duo have achieved their aim and in fact succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in trying to see how far into the modern day they could stretch these incredibly old styles and make them more palatable to modern tastes. I've said it once and I'll say it again; this is an extraordinary recording and one that deserves to be heard by the music consuming masses. Whether it will be has to be very dependent on promotion and the public's ability to digest something that is totally unique in its conception and fulfillment. One of the most extraordinary albums I have ever heard!
https://houseandland.bandcamp.com/