Rachel Musson - Ashes and Dust, Earth and Sky (Lludw a Llwch, Daear a Nef) (2024) [Hi-Res]

I’m very pleased to announce that I have a new album coming out on the 16th February 2024. Titled Ashes and Dust, Earth and Sky, LLudw a Llwch, Daear a Nef, it is a solo project that feels like a bit of a shift in direction for me. One of the outcomes of a DYCP grant (thank you Arts Council England) that I received to explore composition using different recording techniques, it uses field recordings collected from West Wales and London, and recordings of saxophones, flutes and other bits and pieces. Part composed, part slowly improvised (I think there’s a difference, but it’s hard to know where to draw this line) over a year, the music explores my sense of the place of a specific little corner of Wales, juxtaposed against the more familiar to me sounds of the city. During the pandemic I yearned for open skies and air and sea, and I spent some time exploring my ancestry, learning that generations of my family lived and worked the land in West Wales, before moving east to the coalfields of South Wales. It made me think of our shifting relationships to land, and how estranged from land and earth I felt two floors up in the city during the pandemic. I feel very fortunate to be able to have the time and space to experience and explore both ends of this UK spectrum. Visiting West Wales, in particular the Gwaun Valley, which remains largely unchanged over the last few hundred years compared to the constantly changing cityscape, and reflecting on the different soundscapes I collected led to the responses, improvisations and compositions that are found on this record. I look forward to sharing it with you early next year. CDs and downloads will be available on my (yet to be created) Bandcamp page, as well as digital streaming services.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Rachel Musson - Meltwater (6:02)
1.02 - Rachel Musson - Bethink And Lay To Heart (3:42)
1.03 - Rachel Musson - Dawnsing (7:24)
1.04 - Rachel Musson - Keystone (4:05)
1.05 - Rachel Musson - Windblown (6:45)
1.06 - Rachel Musson - Ashes and Dust, Earth and Sky (Lludw a llwch, daear a nef) (9:54)