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LP
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SOD 124LP
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Mine is the Heron is the new Tom James Scott record, the first document of his solo work since 2017. Over the past decade, the UK-based composer has released a diverse body of recordings via labels such as Bo'Weavil, Carnivals, Where To Now?, and his own impeccably curated Skire imprint. This album finds Scott in half-remembered, sanguine moods, some of which are likely to remind listeners of his collaborative work with Andrew Chalk. Fragile acoustic piano runs are meted out with painterly finger strokes, buoyed by subtle, idiosyncratic FM sound design, chimes, and guitar. Culled from recordings composed and put to tape over the past several years, the collection has the feel of a poet's selected works, or perhaps more appropriately, a compendium of letters -- exquisite vignettes that feel simultaneously private and important to disseminate into world. The hermetic nature of this quietly stunning music is evocative of abandoned shingle beaches and misty marshes, and of the Virginia Woolf novel from which the album takes its title: "Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another munching; and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and the green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of the man fetching cart-horses from the fields -- all are mine." Recorded by Tom James Scott on Walney Island, 2016-2019. Mastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering.
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LP
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SIDRA 007LP
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Tom James Scott's two previous CD releases for Bo'Weavil Recordings both featured acoustic guitar as primary voice. His first LP -- while maintaining similar melodic sensibilities and a feeling of hushed expanse -- sees piano become the main focus, with the title "Drape" (defined in literature documenting past and present dialect native to what is now Cumbria, as, "to speak slowly") determining pace and durations across the four pieces presented. Strings of single notes become humming, shadowy resonances within the body of the instrument, echoing into frequent pause and fragmentation. Initially conceived on guitar and voice, photograph and title were also principal catalysts in the formation of the final work. The image of an older relative as a child holds a likeness through subsequent generations. A now largely-extinct colloquial definition of a word still in common use marks change through evolution and loss. Both convey a past unknown at first-hand, yet both are reflected in the present, fragmented and imagined.
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