The Low Drift launch their debut album, and the Huw Costin, Emma Thorpe, and Matt Hill collaboration have made a worthy statement. I guess you could describe the sound as folk music, but this Nottinghamshire trio bring us so much more with the sound of lo-fi retro synths, acoustic guitars and a mix of stripped-back vocals to give us a gentle but restless clash of vocal styles throughout. IT's probably too early to draw up a 'Best of 2022 Releases' at the moment but I'm holding onto this as a strong contender. Bassey, Left Lion.
There are many albums out there that claim a degree of uniqueness, as artists look to find something that elevates their work enough to get a better chance of being noticed. It's understandable; there's a lot of great music out there which makes it harder to stand out. Surely few albums can claim to be more unique that this collaboration between Emma Thorpe, Matt Hill and Huw Costin. The trio worked under the guidance of psychogeographers Jane Samuels and Dr. Morag Rose exploring ancient green lanes and sunken tracks where our ancestors buried their bones. If you've never heard about psychogeography before, it's a wonderful rabbit hole to explore, and the perfect starting point is provided with album notes written by Dr. Rose.
The result of all this is a truly beautiful album full of magic and haunting imagery. Through nine songs we get to visit places that have absorbed the life and memories of the many generations that have inhabited our island. We travel from the South Wales valleys to Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, via the moorland of Bleaklow and the remains of the B-29 Bleaklow Bomber. While we visit ancient Britain and its standing stones and chalk figures of the past, we also glimpse a more modern land, with its new tar roads and negative environmental impacts.
Amongst the many highlights, there are a few songs that stand out. Driftwood opens the album and it is a gorgeous unhurried gem of a track, accompanied by the kind of flute synth used to unsettling effect on tv shows of the 70s and 80s. Thorpe and Costin's duet on Then Came The Rain is wonderful, leading into one of the more tunefully upbeat tracks, Breezeblocks, conjuring images of 70s industrial landscapes. A Gift Of Unknown Things touches on the barbed wire fences, the dissolution of the monasteries, and ancient myths and legends.
The final track is entitled Monyash, and it's a field recording featuring improvised harmonies and the rhythmic drone of a shruti box. The song was captured in the tunnels on the Monsal Trail in the Peak District, and it has the feel of musicians communing with the land around them. All in all a perfect end to the record.
The Low Drift is a wonderfully poetic journey through land and memory, exploring the incredible connections we have to the geography around us. While that geography may not all be all as picturesque as the rolling fields and coastal pathways, it all has an impact on our collective psyche. The attempt at a deep dive into that impact has created a collection of songs that feel at once universal and personal. Adam Jenkins, Fatea
As I have probably mentioned previously in my scribblings, the beauty of the fact that music is a broad church means that there is something for everyone. Yes, you can appreciate the musicianship, the vocalisation, the lyrical intent and integrity, compositional skill - song smithery if you will - all these factors. This is Part A. But to touch your soul, as successful Art achieves - you must be taken into another realm by your engagement. The Art facilitates this transformation - the Part B. With The Low Drift’s eponymous debut album, both parts are magnificently achieved. For this is an album of the elemental and visceral, full of potent images of nature and its cycle of birth and death. The opener - 'Deadwood' - introduces us to the fragile and brittle voice of Emma Thorpe, who perfectly vocalises the feeling of the irresistible drive of nature, and how our relationships are entwined within it. The flute motif is pure early King Crimson and is sonically appropriate to the emotional atmosphere that is created. The pastoral ambience of 'Deadwood' is immediately fact-checked with 'Come Alive (A Second Time)' where Huw Costin draws upon an urban topographical reality of a presumed past. He possesses a rich, emotive baritone, which manages to drench the opening lines in suitable pathos. The John Martyn influence is cited elsewhere, and is an honest observation that matches the honesty of the song. Also fascinating is how the song reaches its denouement: a production decision that might not have paid off. To these ears it did - most handsomely. The third member of the trio, Matt Hill, takes lead voice duties on the sublime 'Everything Flows', which evokes the spirit of Crosby Stills and Nash at their very finest. And again, nature and the environment we forge from it is the prominent theme - “The moss on an iron ridge / A horse on a distant ridge” and how everything is, essentially interconnected. Believe me, it would be both tempting and perhaps a little self-indulging to go through this album track by track, grandising it until in danger of collapsing under it’s own grandeur. It is an album that reveals the new on every fresh listen. And you must listen. No, the best way is to not take my word, but only my recommendation. Thorpe, Costin and Hill have come together as some sort of symbiotic trio to write and deliver an album of outstanding musical sentiment and beauty. And recognition must be given to the two Psycho-Geographers Jane Samuels and Dr. Morag Rose who worked with the musicians to infuse this collection of compositions with a rich sense of place and emotional sensibility. They achieved their aims fully. With love and golden apples in abundance, and plenty to share (Steve Kinrade, Penny Black Music)
The Low Drift is a musical collaboration between Emma Thorpe, Matt Hill, and Huw Costin, with guidance from psychogeographers Jane Samuels and Morag Rose, which through song explores landscape and folk memory. It’s a notion that’s familiar in some form to anyone who has ever been a rambler, passing through a landscape is always about more than just the obvious natural beauty or urban interest (or lack thereof), that bump in a field is the remains of a medieval village, that gouged out dip is the quarry which provided the nearby town with its stone, this lightly worn path was once a packhorse route significant to trade and before that a Roman road and before that the route that forgotten thousands trod to the barrows on the top of the next hill. Jane Austen stood on this bridge, bored out of her mind by parochial country cousins. And the scars on that exposed rock is where the home guard practiced rifle fire, quaking in their boots and hoping they wouldn’t have to do it for real. Landscape has been shaped and reshaped by people and the most natural spot in the country has been marked forever by these interactions. It’s this multi-layering of geography, sensory impressions and interactions with the imagined ghosts of the past that the album aims to capture in a further layering of sound.
This goal is laid out at its most clearest on ‘A Gift of Unknown Things‘ which opens over finger picked guitar with “there’s a barbed wire fence deep inside the woods / no-one knows why or what’s on the other side” and which continues with other examples of mysterious locations and the strange feelings they invoke finally breaking off with a spoken recounting of the mythology of the British Isles from the well known to the obscure which are linked through the thought that “these islands are haunted by more than ghosts / the old chalk figures and standing stones“. A specific connection is made on ‘Bleaklow‘ which, dreamlike, scours the exposed peak encountering cracks of time – the 20th century pylons stand out of the mist like images from ‘The Changes‘, whilst the crashed skeleton of a B29 Superfortress slowly decays as ghostly Romans continue their spectral manoeuvres all on a windswept landscape that could stand in for the moors around Wuthering Heights. There are more hints of that Seventies TV-folk drama on the album opener ‘Deadwood‘ which wanders ley line connections, and underscores it with a synthesized flute line which ties the song to half remembered childhood dramas like ‘The Tomorrow People‘ and ‘Children of the Stones‘. Half remembered, of course, if one is old enough.
All these guided musings through folksong forms lightly touched with electronica and spoken word come to a culmination with the instrumental ‘Monyash‘ which with fadings in and out and a hypnotic reverb heavy main guitar riff evoke again an English mysterious landscape with deep roots and, if one knows it, perhaps a glimpse at the hidden rites of neary Arbor Low. And it works as a piece of travel in thought – if one knows the village then it makes mental connections and if one does not then in the context of the album it offers a new place for the mind to travel to and contemplate.
‘The Low Drift‘ is successful as a short collection of folk inspired pieces of music, the extra layer of a thought provoking theme stitching the music together only adds to this. The musical partnership is one that could easily have generated another two or three songs without the album out staying its welcome. Jonathan Aird, Americana UK