Good Morning, the opening track on after a pause, starts with a quiet drone of bass and an unfurling of guitar notes. There is an implication of newness and growth; the guitar seems to give itself repeatedly like a bank of flowers opening one after the other. It’s a deftly rendered mood piece and more than just a scene setter: Toby Hay’s guitar seems to be sowing melodic seeds which will germinate throughout the rest of the album, and Aidan Thorne’s bass creates a solid, earthy framework on which those melodies can flourish.
after a pause is very definitely the result of close collaboration and a kind of thoughtful improvisation. Thorne and Hay have created a space where ideas can take shape, and the process seems admirably organic. It’s an album that apparently came into being without the pressure to exist, which is a rarity in a sales-driven industry. The duo recorded it in Giant Wafer studios in rural Mid Wales back in 2021, and their work together is a reaction to the alienating effects of the Covid pandemic and its various periods of lockdown and isolation. More than just a collaborative album, it is an album that celebrates the nature of collaboration and the possibilities that can arise when two good friends (who also happen to be extremely talented musicians) get the chance to spend some uninterrupted studio time together.
The mood throughout is reflective, though largely not in a sombre way. On Bard, Hay’s guitar flutters and bubbles, and Thorne’s bass stretches itself out languidly, occasionally leaping as if to catch something from the air. Melodic refrains appear and fade; everything travels at its own pace, contemplative but never uninteresting. The elongated bass notes and gentle rain of guitar on Careful gives the feeling of watching a slowly changing landscape through a misted window. This is music that glistens with a kind of newborn dampness: the pensive Draw finds its feet with a slow, bright guitar motif which builds into a satisfying crescendo, while the deliberate, pretty melodicism of Monks Trod showcases Hay’s improvised fingerpicking.
There are darker moments too: the droning, slightly sinister bass that forms the stark backbone of Burden finds beauty in discordance, and She Who Causes Auspicious Things embraces a stranger soundworld, Thorne’s bass picking out its own impressionistic patterns that seem to hold a slightly warped mirror up to Hay’s playing. Eclipse creates an airy soundscape, allowing Thorne to indulge his more experimental urges while Hay’s guitar does the melodic groundwork. But the overall theme is one of harmony with nature. Hope The Birds Return displays a guarded optimism: gentle fingerpicked passages give way to sun-dappled, quivering guitar notes, while a field recording of birdsong permeates Coda, on which the guitar is traded for a sparkling piano melody.
Taken as a whole, After A Pause plots a course from brightness and optimism through trepidation to a resolution of contentment that rings with hope. Given that the pair had no idea what path the project would take when they first entered the studio together, the fact that the album feels so coherent is impressive. What is even more impressive is the improvisational rapport they developed in such a short space of time and how they managed to translate that into music of sharply-defined brilliance, shot through with the light of the Welsh countryside and brimming with consideration both for the spirit of collaboration and for the natural world. after a pause is the work of two consummate musicians who aren’t afraid to push themselves and each other in new directions.
Out now on Cambrian Records (released March 29, 2024) – Bandcamp
Read our earlier interview here: https://klofmag.com/2023/02/interview-toby-hay-aidan-thorne-after-the-pause/