Saturday Night Howff with Adenine, The Micro Band and The Girl Who Cried Wolf
howff /haʊf/. A favourite meeting place or haunt, especially a pub.
Welcome to Saturday night at the Howff, Bella’s lounge for the lockdown. This week we feature Adenine, The Micro Band and The Girl Who Cried Wolf.
Adenine – made by composer, harpist, vocalist and sound recorder Ailie Robertson under the name Adenine – is a record about nature and our place in the landscape. The song titles Smirr, Spindrift, Flindrikin, Aftak and Haar all refer to types of rain – from light drizzle, to sea spray to a coastal mist – but they also represent the erosion of nature and the gradual disappearance of language connected to nature, supplanted by the next word of the year in the OED.
The album is a stunning work; five tracks slowly unfurling, the beautiful harp mixing with field recordings and ambient noise to create a record that fits with the neoclassical work of A Winged Victory For The Sullen, the folk-centred work of fellow harpist Mary Lattimore and the creeping drones of Grouper.
Adenine, the album, centres itself in the Scottish landscape and is inspired by folklore and the writing of Kathleen Jamie. “Walking in the Scottish highlands is like a lesson in time and impermanence,” Robertson explains. “As you hike trails that have been tread by generations before, you see change all around you – mountains and valleys carved by Ice Age glaciers, abandoned homes and shelters, wind farms appearing on the horizon.”
You can see more from Adenine and support her work at her bandcamp here: https://adenine1.bandcamp.com/
The Edinburgh-based Micro Band have been being intimidatingly creative during these past lockdown months. Their latest release – a music video for their song Back on Track – was filmed in a bedroom, utilising such domestic objects as cardboard tubes, cotton wool, milk bottles, a giant tennis ball covered in paint, the entrails of a ripped up sleeping bag, a projector and some curtains. The song itself was recorded in the legendary Abbey Road Studios.
As lead singer and songwriter (and maker of the film) Alexander Auld-Smith says, ‘I visualised the loneliness and isolation in the verses of the song as akin to the vast darkness of space and all the warm beauty of the choruses as a natural remedy to that, deep in a womb-like garden. Then I just had to consider how the hell I was going to achieve the sort of visuals I had in mind while in lockdown.’ The video also features movement from dancer and performance artist Suzi Cunningham.
Continuing their quest to show us all up, The Micro Band have managed to self-record four new songs during lockdown in a secret recording studio underneath The Royal Mile, and are in the process of getting them ready for release. Their upcoming single Bridge of Eden will be released in the next month with a new video.
You can hear more from The Micro Band and support their work at their bandcamp here: https://themicroband.bandcamp.com/
And you can see more from Suzi Cunningham on her website here : https://suzicunninghamartist.weebly.com/resumeacute.html
The Girl Who Cried Wolf is the powerful alt-pop project of singer-songwriter Lauren Gilmour and drummer Audrey Tait. Both producers and artists in their own right, their latest EP, Out Of It, is full of urgent, driving lyrics and sensitively constructed layers of sound that build and burst. Their combined love of fierce female vocals and anthemic production shines through each track.
You can hear more from The Girl Who Cried Wolf and support their work at their bandcamp here: https://thegirlwhocriedwolfmusic.bandcamp.com/