Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
You can also download PDFs of the inserts which will accompany the vinyl. One is a lyric sheet, the other a letter from psychogeographer Dr. Morag Rose.
Purchasable with gift card
£7GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Vinyl edition of The Low Drift album with cover art by Jane Samuels. Inserts include an essay by renowned psychogeographer Dr. Morag Rose.
Postage and Packaging is £4 for UK £6 for elsewhere.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Low Drift
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
edition of 150
£20GBPor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
CD in a gatefold digipack.
Postage and Packing is £2 for the UK and £3 for the rest of the world.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Low Drift
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Songs inspired by the land. The beauty and the concrete, the mysteries and the folklore. An album about family, childhood and the memories that landscapes invoke.
In 2019, friends in music Emma Thorpe, Matt Hill ,and Huw Costin came together to write songs about the land. Working under the guidance of psychogeographers Jane Samuels and Dr. Morag Rose they made a plan to explore edge-lands and barren fields. That journey, to nowhere in particular, is tracked on their debut album, the eponymously titled The Low Drift.
Inspired by the English folk and poet musicians of their youths – Julian Cope, Robert Calvert, Kate Bush - they travelled beyond the Keep Out signs, to the ancient green lanes and sunken tracks where our ancestors buried their bones. The music they found there is natural and elemental, even stark in places with Thorpe's haunting voice taking the lead on Deadwood against a backdrop of primitive 70's TV flute-synth – “I saw comets, fields burning, earth turning, clay furroughs in ancient ground”. It's a song that wouldn't seem out of place on a Twin Peaks Soundtrack or the Fuzzy Felt Folk compilation.
Elsewhere the album features shimmering 12 string guitars, minimalist folk picking, echoing electric and primitive synths sounds straight out of children's TV that scarred a generation in the 1970's and 80's. But this is no retrospective nostalgia fest, on the John Martyn influenced 'Come Alive A Second Time' Costin evokes the present day home of his father in the South Wales valleys. With a narrow bleak focus, the song mirrors the changing physical geography of the valleys with the declining health of the last generation of coal miners.
These are songs that speak of ancient mysteries just below the concrete. Hill spent his formative years as a member of the ‘Ley Hunter Society’, obsessed with earth energies, dowsing and mystery lights in the skies. On the song Gift of Unknown Things, wrapped in haunting three part harmonies, he evokes the "old chalk figures and standing stones, fairy paths and spirit roads"
Costin explains “...where we tried to write epic - we could only stumble towards the personal, and where we tried to write history – we could only heed the warnings in the weather, and where we tried to understand - we could only find soliloquies – and arrive nowhere in particular...”
This album is a soundtrack to that journey.
credits
released March 4, 2022
The Low Drift is Emma Thorpe, Matt Hill, & Huw Costin.
All songs Thorpe/Hill/Costin
Produced by the Low Drift
Recorded by James Bennet at Swanyard Studios, except synths on Come Alive (A Second Time), and guitars for Monyash by Huw at home, and Everything Flows by Matt on his phone at home. Monyash Voices & shruti box recorded in the tunnels on the Monsall Trail, Derbyshire.
Mixed by Huw. Mastered by Sam Brown at Kinema Audio. Cover image by Jane Samuels. Logo design by Richard Knox at Death Rattle Press. Design and Layout by Jacob Kirk.
Special thanks to Huw Jones at Kinema Audio, Jane Samuels and Morag Rose.
CAT No. CWM012121. Made in the UK. (C) & (P) 2021 The Low Drift. All rights of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, renting, public performance and broadcasting of this record prohibited.
Songs inspired by the landscapes of the British Isles. Not just the beauty of the land but the concrete too. And the stories and the mysteries and the folklore. And family, childhood and the memories that landscapes invoke.
This has been a hard year as a social worker I recognise that I am not facing the reality of the saving of lives and I despair at how the government have treated our nhs people. I have been responding to the needs and crisis faced by children and young people in care . Carers with health vulnerability with challenging teens who won’t follow the rules- risks there create anxiety, carers of children who have been abused and traumatised- limited services - songs like this keep me going thanks maureenb
A vibrant vision of "Central Americana" from the Costa Rica-based artist, blending heartland devotionals with playful Tropicália grooves. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 27, 2022
I absolutely love this album. I feel very privileged to have seen Matt perform it at Tolpuddle 2016 and to have gained insight into the stories behind the songs. It is hard to choose a favourite song as it works so well as a whole. I have listened to it a few times now and it still makes me feel all the emotions from despair to joy, but mostly joy. I am sure I will have these songs and stories and the history they tell in my mind next time I go to the ballot box. Lisa Black