‘FOR EVERY DAY YOU LOST’ 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, 1950
6. 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
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.”
The first 200 copies of For Every Day You Lost were accompanied by ‘Woodwork,’ a limited edition 3″ disc of exclusive album remixes by Fieldhead, The Declining Winter, Gareth S. Brown and Epic45.
‘WOODWORK’ TRACKLISTING :
1. Hold Onto My Words ~ Gareth S. Brown remix
2. Like The Oak Than The Willow ~ Fieldhead remix
3. Shelter Here ~ The Declining Winter remix
4. I’ll Always Come Back to This Place ~ Epic 45 remix
SOLD OUT
Download/stream ‘For Every You Lost’ on the official brave timbers Bandcamp page
