On 9th October, Sharron Kraus releases her new album K I N (Nightshade Records – pre-order via Bandcamp). This will be Sharron’s second release of the year, following Swift Wings, a collaboration with Justin Hopper on which they shone a light on the underappreciated Victorian poet Victor Neuburg.
In the review of her last solo album, Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow (2018), Thomas Blake ended his review by drawing focus to Sharron’s songwriting:
But perhaps the most important thing, in a world in which instant gratification and long-term despair are increasingly held up as the only options, is the sense of a lasting optimism that goes beyond the span of a human life, that perhaps even defines the nature of human life. Kraus may not be able to answer those big questions – maybe they are unanswerable – but she has found the best possible way to ask them.
The press for her new album K I N draws a similar light:
The spine supporting this body of work is songwriting, though, and it is to this most natural combination of words and music that she always returns. If prose writing is a tool for analysis and working out what we think, because of the emotional dimension music introduces, songwriting is a tool for working out how we feel.
The album features musicians: Neal Heppleston: bass guitar and double bass; Guy Whittaker: drums, programming; James Street: keyboards; Nick Jonah Davis: guitar, slide guitar, lap steel and Pat Gubler: guitar and Rhodes.
Below, we have the pleasure of sharing the video for ‘The World Within the World’, something we seem to need now more than ever in an ever increasingly chaotic world as Sharron discovered when visiting Nine Ladies stone circle in Derbyshire.
Sharron Kraus on ‘The World Within the World’:
‘The World Within the World’ tries to capture a state of mind a friend and I discovered one summer’s evening out at the Nine Ladies stone circle in Derbyshire. We’d gone there to enjoy the peaceful, magical vibe there, but arrived to find lots of cars parked up and people gathering for a party, playing music and getting wasted. We wandered off into the heathery moorland and found a glade that felt hidden from the pathways that crisscross the landscape, and although the party sounds still carried over to where we were, it felt peaceful there, like we were in a kind of cocoon. We did an improvised meditation/ritual that enabled us to slip into this still, quiet place that felt like it was inside us all along, the idea of a layer of stillness that’s there underneath the chaos and turmoil of everyday life. It was a wonderful feeling and I’ve found myself able to slip into it at will since then and experience a slowing down of what’s happening around me, a way of feeling there to be stillness or a kind of pause that coexists with everything that’s going on. It feels like a ‘world within the world’.
Shooting the footage used in the video for the song was also a stillness-inducing process: there’s something about narrowing your focus down to an image on a camera viewfinder and getting drawn into what’s on the screen that has the effect of slowing your awareness down, stilling your thoughts.
K I N is out on 9th October – pre-order via Bandcamp
Upcoming Live Dates
24th October
Notes&Sounds at The University Arms, 197 Brook Hill, Sheffield, S3 7GH
Solo improv set
13th November
Drama Studiol, Sheffield
Performing ‘Swift Wings’ with Justin Hopper
15th November
Bishops House, Sheffield
24th November
The Victoria Theatre, Fountain Street, Halifax
1st December
The Cube, 4 Princess Row, Bristol BS2 8NQ
Website: https://sharronkraus.com/