This CD has been a long time in the making. Tim and Julie Cole have worked as a duo on the folk scene for many years, and for almost as long we have talked about making a CD together which would hopefully add something to the amazing tradition of maverick British folk music, and which would be able to include some elements from my own electronic methodology.
Neither Tim, Julie or I are lyric writers, so the project remained theoretical for a number of years. Finally. the catalyst was my meeting with poet / musician Keith Jafrate, where I realised that his adventurous work was also aesthetically perfect for the project we had in mind.
Keith took some of his recent poems, added some new pieces, and presented us with a coherent cycle of work to set whose highly personal imagery gives the CD a very strong sense of unity and purpose.
Tim's songs are complex and highly musicianly, sitting inside the wider tradition of pioneering work by greats such as Pentangle, John Martyn, Nick Drake, and giving me plenty of scope to work on adventurous arrangements which are centred on dark woodwinds plus a range of "classic" keyboards such as mellotron, Fender Rhodes and Hammond organ which hopefully carry both a allusion to the history of this tradition, plus an occasional pointer to the future. I managed even to get in the odd bit of Faust and Stockhausen, though not too much!
Of course, all of this would be meaningless without Julie's fantastically pure haunting and keening vocal which centres the works, and gives them the timeless quality we were looking for.
MWA July 2007
