This post appeared first in our KLOF Mag’s Substack.
Dust of the river does murmur and weep…
It’s 5.43am and I’m sat in Glasgow airport with tears streaming down my face. For some reason- maybe as an inoculation to the grey, commercial enormity of the airport- I’d decided to listen to Incredible String Band’s pantheistic epic ‘Maya’, and it’s caught me off guard. “This is the song I’d like played at my funeral” I thought to myself, as I looked into the sagging faces of my fellow travellers. Then everyone would finally comprehend the subtle splendour of my soul, as they dabbed tears away and tried to stop the coffin entering the crematorium flames. “What kind of monstrous God would take someone so handsome and so poetic?!” they’d cry before finally slumping back into their pews, exhausted and inconsolable.
Then I started thinking about times I’d performed it onstage with Incredible String Band’s Mike Heron and my former Trembling Bell bandmate, Lavinia Blackwall. My mind spooled back 10 years to Big Mike Hastings playing his guitar like a column of smoke. Mike Heron’s daughter, Georgia Seddon, hammering the piano like she’s in psychic communication with her dad’s nervous system. Lavinia peering into the vortex of the song and conjuring all its crimson mystery. Then I started thinking about her recent wedding to long-time collaborator and kindred folk-spirit, Marco Rea. All their faces mixed with memories of the sacred ceremony and the lyrics of ‘Maya’, as I boarded a flight to Naples for a week long holiday in a small village in the mountains where they have a property.
What fun, what awkwardness, what revelation, what irritation awaits us? What pages from the book of life will we write together? Or will this be a 20-year-friendship-ending trip? If I knew Lavinia there’d be great food, lots of music and plenty of alcoholic exhaustion.
And so it came to pass.
In time her hair grew long and swept the ground…
Nestled in the emerald hills of the Molise national park, we arrive in the tiny village of Cerasuolo. There’s a two-day festival just starting with spaghetti-eating competitions, fireworks and a Rolling Stones tribute band. The neighbouring village of Montecassino is the backdrop of various films documenting its savage bombing during World War Two – the after shocks of which are still felt throughout the region.
Lavinia and Marco’s house is exactly like you’d imagine it to be. Luminous tiles and 1970’s wallpaper emanate psychedelic patterns in every room. Lavinia’s artwork is propped up on an easel in the light-flooded living room alongside regiments of wine bottles. Marco has a music studio in a sound proofed basement, which doubles up as a yoga room. The tiled surfaces give everything an acoustic vividness which is simultaneously hyper-real and dreamlike.
But I’m not here just to admire their lives and party like I’m 15 years younger than I actually am. I’m also here to interview my oldest friend about her remarkable sophomore album, The Making (released May 30th, 2025 via The Barne Society).
The great ship, the ship of the world long time sailing…
Released on Lavinia and Marco’s own label, The Barne Society (full disclosure: they also released my neglected 2025 masterpiece, The National Trust), The Making is Lavinia’s most fully-formed conception yet. The song writing is frank and dynamic it’s turbo charged by Marco’s technicolour production – a detail Lavinia is keen to point out, in her characteristic modesty. “Marco’s production has really given the whole thing a good sense of continuity. I love the way the whole album sounds.” she enthuses when I ask what she’s most proud of about her new baby.
The sky-scraping tunes on songs like ‘The Will To Be Wild’ and ‘The Damage We Have Done’ cement Lavinia’s reputation as a superlative singer and a writer of great melodic power. She confirms this is a priority when she’s sculpting a new dittie, often back-projecting meaning onto the piece once she’s nailed the tune. “I don’t set out to write about any topic in particular, necessarily. Quite often when I sit down to write a song, it’s the melody that comes first and I find that when I reflect on them afterwards they’ve got more of a meaning than they had at the time.”
It’s often the mark of a good song when their meaning reveals itself slowly – your skin blends with their surface and your conjoined shadow lengthens through time. Having said that, there are recurrent themes embroidered through The Making. A point which Lavinia reveals to be her attempts to breakout of stultifying situations in resl life. “A lot of the songs were written around a time when things were a bit tricky for me emotionally. There was loss in the family. I was in a job I didn’t enjoy and couldn’t find a way out of. It’s about trying to escape mediocre situations and move to a happier place.” she confides as we sit in her back garden, sipping Proseco in the hot hot heat of an Italian summer. It’s touching to see that she seems to have found that in this small corner of paradise and also back home in Scotland. “My life in Italy has given me a sense of freedom. And life at my cabin (in Carbeth – a hutting community about 10 miles north of Glasgow) in some ways is quite similar, because you’re off-grid and away from the daily grind and you’re in this beautiful setting with a precious community and a sense of history and belonging.”
All this world is but a play, be thou the joyful player…
She has an enviable life and that has been hard fought. But how does Lavinia reflect on the past and her time in our previous project, Trembling Bells? Her album single, ‘My Hopes Are All Mine’ has been interpreted as a comment about that period of her life. “That was a really fantastic time. The lyric ‘My hopes are mine’ is about me feeling hopeful about moving on with my own creative prospects and a journey within myself. And the next line ‘and yours are gone’ refers to some of the Trembling Bells fans who didn’t take my solo work seriously and just wanted me to carry on the Trembling Bells. If you’ve been in a band for 10 years, then you want to move on. I think that’s quite common and being able to do your own thing is quite liberating. And sometimes that doesn’t really match the genre of the band you were working in. Like I don’t think my material would suit the Trembling Bells stuff at all. It doesn’t have the gravity, lyrically.” she offers, as I point an invisible pistol from my pocket.
It’s a healing conversation with an artist who I greatly admire and a friendship which has meant so much to me over the years. We have travelled the world together and been constant sources of support and companionship for each other. Her talent, kindness and humility continue to inspire me. And that is very precious in a world that can feel polarised and unstable. She has struck a great life/ work equilibrium of productivity, leisure, creativity and community. The Making is a significant achievement and I can’t wait to see what she does next – musically or otherwise.
Order ‘The Making’ via Bandcamp: https://laviniablackwall.bandcamp.com/album/the-making