Taken from her forthcoming album The Living Mountain, Jenny Sturgeon, our Artist of the Month, has shared a video by Jim Lockey for album track ‘The Plants’.
As mentioned in Thomas Blake’s review of the album (read it here), it’s the perfect musical equivalent to Nan Shepherd’s book ‘The Living Mountain’ which directly influenced the album and from which it takes its title with the songs named after chapters in the book.
The plants on the Cairngorms are indeed unique and include rare and endangered species. There’s also a profound beauty to be found in the bonsai sized pines and scree flowers. These plants manage to find niche ecosystems to exist within including alpine saxifrage, Highland saxifrage, Highland cudweed, hare’s-foot sedge, curved wood-rush, Alpine lady-fern, wavy meadow-grass, snow fork-moss, scorched rustwort, monster pawwort, Scots pine, juniper, creeping lady’s-tresses, twinflower and ostrich-plume feather-moss (find out more here).
Despite being a well-travelled woman, Shepherd’s heart was in the Cairngorms, she loved the mountains, so much so she apparently got altitude sickness if she spent too long at sea level. As Robert MacFarlane said in his introduction to the Canons edition of the book: “Shepherd came to know the Cairngorms ‘deeply’ rather than ‘widely'”.
This album is far more than a tribute to Shepherd and her work, neither is it just a musical response. At its core, there is a sympathy and understanding that traverses time from Shepherd to Sturgeon. A shared awareness, like Shepherd, she’s has learnt “to be” with the mountains, and that’s what you hear in this music… a touch of mountain enlightenment, something we could all do with.
As Thomas Blake concluded in his review, “She has created a work of rare beauty: to hear The Living Mountain is to hear the song of the Cairngorms.”
The Plants
there’s a strength, which lies beneath
anchoring the surface life
between bed rock and the sky
deep-rooted to this place
we are of the soil
of the soil
there’s a home, which breathes the air
myrtle, asphodel they thrive
rain nurtures and it floods
the seed, the root, the bird
after the rain falls
we’ll be waiting
it’s time to grow
we are of the soil
brush through broom, the pollens rise
rowan, birch and Scots pines
drifting through, as dust to dirt
as ochre on the wind
we are of the soil
Pre-Order Now on CD and Limited Edition Blue Vinyl http://smarturl.it/thelivingmountain
Released 16/10/20