We have a video premiere today from lo fi acoustic poet and song writer Owen Trowmans with his new video for Child Winter, taken from his new Winter Tape EP due for release on 29th Jan 2016 via Sacred Geometry as a cassette and download (via Bandcamp). He shared this about the video:
I love found footage videos and I wanted Mike to tie in with the song by using images of an idealised winter childhood and contrasting them with an overly-sunny, gauche 50s feel. The closing reverie hopefully brings us back to that sense of yearning for home and childhood.
Following several recent full band outings, Owen Tromans has retreated to the homespun hermeticism of his self-described ‘suburban loner folk’ for his Winter Tape EP. Imagine if you will, Tim Buckley, Eric Chenaux and Richard Thompson recording with a stripped down, world weary Low and fronted by the melodies and spoken word of a very English incarnation and hybrid of Ivor Cutler and RM Hubbert. These are narrative songs and ruminations on the colder months – Owen has a long-standing affection for the season. Owen’s old band, Peel favourite, indie rockers San Lorenzo, released a 7” Three Songs for Winter in 1999, and he continues a yearly tradition of his Christmas Eve recordings he has compiled since 2004.
Opener The Neighbourhood Watch brings to mind the downbeat, slacker vibe of Sonic Youth’s quieter ‘90s moments, as swirling feedback curls around lyrical snatches of small town rebellion. Incredible Weapons meanwhile is a tribute to the band of the same name, the project of long-time Tromans collaborator Danny Gee, couched in a tale of urbane mundanity, it finds the beauty in the humdrum, a skill that sets Tromans alongside the great British cultural observers of recent musical history, a la Jarvis Cocker, Aiden Moffat and Alex Turner. Child Winter sprang from an inscription discovered inside an old Angus Maclise broadside – Love to Cinderella’s Mother from Child Winter. From this came a song of movement – from the icy north to an unspecified sunlit town, and the longing for home that followed. Urban desolation, quiet and slow decay.
The story of Bonaparte in the Eighties is sung simply over a battered classical guitar. It tells the tale of an upstart social climber, successfully ingratiating himself with big money and old family banking, only to find release and redemption upon his unmasking as a fraud. Finally, closing track Crown evolves from the suburban magical realism that has characterised much of Tromans’ work to a quietly engrossing finale.
Order it via Bandcamp here: sacredgeometryrecs.bandcamp.com/album/winter-tape
Photo Credit: Alex Hornby