Our debut CD released 8th April 2016.
Physical copies of the CD are available to purchase via our Bandcamp page link below the music player, or you can download or stream our album via the iTunes and Spotify links.
Thanks!
Our Story:
This CD is the culmination of a four year collaboration between us and Ryan Probert, creating a large-scale work which takes inspiration from both Hokusai’s famous woodblock prints and Ryan’s personal experiences in Japan. The thirty-six miniatures for guitar duo enchant in their serenity and contrast, being called ‘charmingly Satie-like in their oddity, and played with truly uncanny unanimity by guitarists Julian Vickers and Daniel Bovey’ (Ivan Hewett, Daily Telegraph).
The CD was recorded in August 2015 in Wardour Chapel, Tisbury, and was released on our own label, Clement Records, in April 2016 with sponsorship by Japan Society London and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation for production costs and a London launch concert, held at Swedenborg Hall. In May 2016 we were invited to perform and discuss the CD on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune with Sean Rafferty.
Ryan’s Story:
I was asked for a “raison d’être”, which is roughly defined as, “reason or justification for being or existence”. The reason these pieces exist is a 2011 trip to Japan that had a profound impact on me. One of the overwhelming emotions I felt upon returning to the UK, can only be described as Saudade, a Portuguese word meaning a deep emotional state of melancholic longing for a person or thing that is absent.
I knew I may never see Japan again, and may never meet the friends I made again. The catalyst to make the compositions was when one of these friends sent me a set of Hokusai’s prints, I found them irresistible and started making the pieces, with each movement dedicated to a friend I had made in Japan, and through Hokusai perhaps Japan itself.
