Having spent two years rebuilding a Georgian farmhouse in the wild Welsh countryside, Rebecca Rose Harris and Franklin Mockett filled their car with a refined selection of instruments and a tape machine and headed to France for a three-week residency in early 2020. However, the world had different ideas and before the end of the first week they were given a simple choice: head home immediately or stay and ride out the incoming lockdown which would force the closure of all borders indefinitely.
They decided to stay and keep working, a decision that would lead to new music and the pair conjured up more than 60 sketches, with no intention of making an album but more just as a document of the time they spent there and the beautiful countryside that surrounded them.
Though many of these songs are improvisations – led both by specific moments and the days and nights that Rebecca and Franklin spent wondering the surrounding hills and forests – ’Begin Again’ is an understated subtle strum.
“Begin Again is about the absence of a love through an unforeseen death. It personifies the particular type of distance attributable to absence. The song is an almost haunting echo that resides in-between the realms of the lives we live and the lives we intend to live.”
Revisiting the same spot in the remote Pyrenees mountains one year later, Samana recorded Begin Again live session in the original setting it was written: as the night swept in over the oak-covered mountains.
“The live session was filmed and recorded in the very same chair of the room it was written in one year prior. Rebecca wrote begin again at dusk, beside the open windows, looking out onto a horizon of distant bending silver ash and scrub-oak covered mountains as the light rapidly transitioned into a palate of darkening blues. We felt it would be poignant to revisit this space at the same time of day to record this live session, which gives a sense of the songs origin.”
In this live performance, on which James Osler’s string arrangements are absent, we just have Harris’ vocals and a gently strummed guitar. Her voice, even during the quieter notes, holds such beauty and serenity, balancing deeper sombre tones against gentle fragile notes. It’s such a mesmerising and all-consuming delivery, it just stops you in your tracks. Samana is both poetry, music, striking photography and fine art…it’s a unique and beautiful project, one that you’re happily drawn into to spend time with. I encourage you to explore their music and photography here and catch them live, dates below.
Samana Live Dates
2nd September – St Pancras Old Church – London
7th October 2021 – Focus Wales – Memorial Hall, Wrexham, Wales
Ticket Links: https://www.samanaroad.com/samana-tourdates
Website: https://www.samanaroad.com