Music and memory go hand in hand…
The Rough Island Band have been making music inspired by the extraordinary and remote Isles of Scilly for 10 years now. Over that time, various creative strands of musicianship, strong feelings about place and - increasingly - deep friendship have banded together in creating a body of recorded music that really gets to the heart of Scilly.
Sou’wester Sessions Revisited is less a re-making of the Rough Island Band’s debut 2009 album Sou’wester Sessions than it is a creative re-imagining of it. Shot through with nostalgia, it revisits the same musical material from the early album, but recorded through the lens of memory and transformation - each track entirely conjured afresh with the benefit of hindsight and coloured by the powerful experiences that tie one small group of humans to another over the years.
During the 10 years since the Rough Island Band first sat in the island hall on St Agnes together and played their first note as a band, the lives of the individual band members have changed (as have their hairstyles) - marriages have been celebrated; children have been born, whilst others have left home; friends have been found and lost; there have been successes (musical and personal) and failures. Throughout all this change, the island of St Agnes has proved to be a rock of stability.
This rich tangle of experience is evident throughout the soundscape of the album, which layers a highly personal version of ‘contemporary folk music’ with the stories of Scilly and with the band’s own relationship to the place and to each other. Above all, it captures a week of joyous and heartfelt music (re)making in the spring of 2019 on St Agnes, Isles of Scilly.
Have a listen to a couple of tracks from the album...
The Rough Island Band have been making music inspired by the extraordinary and remote Isles of Scilly for 10 years now. Over that time, various creative strands of musicianship, strong feelings about place and - increasingly - deep friendship have banded together in creating a body of recorded music that really gets to the heart of Scilly.
Sou’wester Sessions Revisited is less a re-making of the Rough Island Band’s debut 2009 album Sou’wester Sessions than it is a creative re-imagining of it. Shot through with nostalgia, it revisits the same musical material from the early album, but recorded through the lens of memory and transformation - each track entirely conjured afresh with the benefit of hindsight and coloured by the powerful experiences that tie one small group of humans to another over the years.
During the 10 years since the Rough Island Band first sat in the island hall on St Agnes together and played their first note as a band, the lives of the individual band members have changed (as have their hairstyles) - marriages have been celebrated; children have been born, whilst others have left home; friends have been found and lost; there have been successes (musical and personal) and failures. Throughout all this change, the island of St Agnes has proved to be a rock of stability.
This rich tangle of experience is evident throughout the soundscape of the album, which layers a highly personal version of ‘contemporary folk music’ with the stories of Scilly and with the band’s own relationship to the place and to each other. Above all, it captures a week of joyous and heartfelt music (re)making in the spring of 2019 on St Agnes, Isles of Scilly.
Have a listen to a couple of tracks from the album...