Folk Radio (UK)

In this modern technological era geographical boundaries are regularly removed with the aid of the internet across which musical contributions flow before being mastered. Whilst it overcomes constraints and can save artists a lot of money there is something soulless and isolationist about it all…there’s no smiling faces peering at you over a musical connection you’ve just made, it can be a lonely existence. As demonstrated by sound explorer Taylor Deupree’s latest collaboration there is a lot to be gained by real human interaction and completely immersing yourself in local landscapes.

Taylor Deupree teamed up with Cameron Webb, aka Seaworthy for their first album together:<i> Wood, Winter, Hollow</i>. They travelled out during a cold Winter February from New York to a 4,000 acre nature preserve near Deupree’s studio called Ward Pound Ridge. If anyone takes time to stand out in a woodland in the middle of winter will know there is an incredible stillness through which winter’s hands can be heard working away from the soft landing of flakes to the crackling thaw which are all magically amplified.

<i>Wood, Winter, Hollow</i> captures this environment in a very raw form with field recordings that included hydrophones placed in near-frozen streams. As can be heard on the album stream below those sounds really reawaken that feeling of winter which are heightened by Webb’s nylon string guitar responses which act like the subtle warmth of a thaw, a reminder of what is reawakening beneath whilst the wind, occasional subtle synth and bells project a vastness which can be really heard on Winter.

Throughout the album there is a genuine feeling that both artists really connected not just with each other as evidenced by their harmonic balance but with the land around them. Both artists are immersed in their environment, something they could not have achieved through wires thousand of miles apart, a remarkably moving album.