Kings of The South Seas brought us their eponymous debut in 2014 inspired by the epic whaling expeditions to the South Pacific in the early 19th century. For their latest project they are teaming up with an array of musical friends to record their ‘Free Folk’ series, which will see them gathering in a studio for a day with different artists and spontaneously creating music, no preconceived ideas are allowed and no boundary is sacred!
Free Folk Vol. 1 sees squeeze box virtuoso and BBC Folk Musician of the year, Andy Cutting joining Kings of The South Seas to produce some astounding sonic journeys beyond musical genre as you can hear below on The Fish Who Reached Too Far, our Tune of the Day.
Ben Nicholls had this to say about the session:
The session with Andy Cutting was amazing and it feels like it really shows his playing in a whole different light to that which you’d expect to normally hear him, even if the session was interrupted by a power cut when a tractor drove into an electric pylon next to the studio!
The Kings of The South Seas band members all come from pretty diverse musical backgrounds: Ben Nicholls on double bass (Full English, Seth Lakeman), Richard Warren on guitar (Spiritualized, Soul Savers) and Evan Jenkins on percussion (Neil Cowley Trio). In this Free Folk series they will collaborate with various musicians who have crossed their paths over the years, that diversity will make for some interesting genre clashes…as Ben Nicholls explained to me “that’s the point of it really”, adding that “….by the improvised nature of the sessions, it limits the preconceived musical ideas of musicians and lets people play in a more natural style.”
He also revealed that they have some very interesting upcoming sessions.
“We’ve got some pretty exciting sessions lined up, including ambient musician/composer Roger Eno, Pete Wareham (sax player supreme and Melt Yerself Down bandleader), Ben Hillier (uber producer of Depeche Mode, Blur etc, who is going to perform on his VCS3 modular synthesizer) amongst others who we’re currently confirming. Everyone we ask seems keen to participate and basically we just get together for an afternoon and play together. “
In terms of projects that excite us, this one is at the top of our list.
Free Folk Vol. 1 is out now and available via Bandcamp here: https://kingsofthesouthseas.bandcamp.com/releases