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Muziek bij de film die ze zelf ook nog regisseerde. Prachtige folk, de moeite meer dan waard. Ik zou de film ook wel eens willen zien, maar ik heb hem hier nog niet gezien.


Already a well-established figure on the contemporary folk scene, Martha Tilston now adds a few more strings to her bow, having written, directed and starred in her debut feature film ‘The Tape’. The accompanying soundtrack album is out now. The film is set in Cornwall, and the narrative follows Tally, a singer who, looking to rekindle her creative spark, is hired to clean a cliff-top house by the sea. 

Following the death of the elderly lady owner, Tally takes up residence, effectively as a squatter. Finding a  piano and a vintage four-track recorder, she starts to make music again, recording a  single cassette copy of the new songs,  and, when the woman’s corporate lawyer nephew turns up (Lee Hart), taken with this unexpected occupant, he rents a fishing cottage rather than reveal he’s the new owner. A relationship, inevitably, develops.

It opens with the piano-led ballad Sadness Of The Sea, a song which, featuring James Patrick Gavin on violin and guitarist Nathan Ball, concerns climate change (“our home is changing/And the cracks in the walls are showing /And the navigators don’t know where were going/There’s a heatwave when it should be snowing”) and our relationship with the planet, but comes with a note of hope (“I think we know how to make things good”).
Joined by Matt Tweed on double bass with Jean Danio on electric guitar and spoken French in the background, soaring in its final stretch, Come Alive turns to notions of creative freedom as self-expression (“find what makes you come alive”). In contrast, Bigger Bridges, with its string arrangement colouring the piano and double bass framework, has a jazzier blues feel to its theme of how “you’re just a chapter in a story that will go on long after you”.

Preceded, as are several tracks, by a brief snippet of dialogue, following the same musical template, as the title suggests, the Celtic folk-infused Wild And Rocky Shores is an atmospheric piece that returns to the soothing soulfulness of the sea (“I’ll not leave me homeland/Nor the wild and rocky shores/I’ll sit here watching for seals/Til my heart aches no more”).  Say It Back sustains the reflective tone with just Tilston’s piano and Hall’s guitar as it unfolds a long-distance love song (“can’t we keep this going honey/When we’re far away”) before flowing into the euphoric liberation of Western Sun (“I’m going to open up my heart… you are the wilderness of my dreams”).

Co-star Lee Hart puts in an appearance, joining Tilston in a reading of her poem Goshawk Child to a spare violin, piano and guitar accompaniment, giving way to a brief arrangement of the traditional Dean Younk A Gernow (Young Man Of Cornwall) sung by Zennor Tyndale Biscoe and returning then to the gentle fingerpicked guitar of the tender uplifting duet We Sang, the first fruit of their new duo collaboration as “Wookey” – Nathan Ball and Martha Tilston.
It comes to a close with, first, the five-minute piano and string Oxygen which navigates the depths and complexities of love and the need for personal space to breathe (“God knows I tried to love you/I just couldn’t do it right…Will you ever forgive me/For needing more oxygen… I suffer from valley fever/I need a change in the oxygen/And you love me so high/You know the sides they get kind of steep”). And, finally, the film’s vocally warbled closing song before a live audience, the circling piano notes and double bass of the dramatic and emotional waves of In This Song ends on its theme of souls connected over time through music (“what if there’s invisible twine/That links your heart somehow to mine… Maybe not in this lifetime/Well you light a candle/And I’ll meet you in this song/If it’s the only place we can belong”).

While the well-reviewed film is currently doing the rounds, The Tape album stands perfectly on its own without the need for a visual narrative, a glowing testament to Tilston’s ever-burgeoning songwriting, musical and vocal brilliance.

Tracks:
01 - Sadness of the Sea
02 - Come Alive
03 - Bigger Bridges
04 - Wild and Rocky Shores
05 - Say It Back
06 - Western Sun
07 - Goshawk Child
08 - Dean Younk a Gernow
09 - We Sang
10 - Oxygen
11 - In This Song

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster. Laat af en toe eens weten wat je van het album vindt. Altijd leuk, de mening van anderen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR3zHS3qBlg