NINE PRAYERS NORTH
Carolyn Hillyer and Nigel Shaw
We began to sense the arrival of this album a few years before its first song reached our door. After many travels in Arctic terrains, north has become scratched onto our bones and wrapped inside our music; over and again we have found ourselves dreaming, composing and writing about timeless ice, reindeer souls and the resonances of taiga and tundra. But the concept of north has always meant so much more than the geographical compass point or a turn within the flow of seasons and we wanted to explore north as a state of being, to ask: what is the north we can give you?
We took a meandering journey to seek and discover threads of tender myth and feral dream to anchor into this music. A couple of the songs surprised us by their strange intensity, others managed to be a close reflection of what we had in our hearts when we wrote them. And our whisky song has made us laugh. Our concerts during 2022 will include many songs from this album and we hope you will be able to join us for an evening of live music – dates on our concerts page. Nine Prayers North is available on CD or download here.