In his review of Natalie Wildgoose‘s EP, Rural Hours, Thomas Blake notes how “her songs are intentionally ephemeral,” and that “part of their appeal is the charged silence they leave in their wake, leaving you to imagine what else there might be.” That release featured the small ensemble of Wildgoose on piano, Owen Spafford on violin and Chris Brain on acoustic guitar.
Today, she has released Rural Tapes, a live EP of songs taken from Rural Hours, recorded to tape and featuring just voice and piano. The EP was recorded on a Tascam Porta O2 Cassette Tape Machine, a 4-track cassette MiniStudio which has become a favourite of many for its warm, saturated, and slightly hiss-heavy analogue sound. Back in April, Natalie was one of our Off the Shelf guests, in which she shared how she’d recorded loads of Come Into The Garden, her previous EP, on her grandad’s Akai Reel-to-Reel Tape Machine. She told us:
I love that when you listen to the recordings after passing them through her, the songs are no longer built, but found, among realms of isolation, magic, and the unknown.
On Rural Tapes, that untamed and rootless feel that Blake mentions in his review is brought to the fore. She shared:
I made Rural Tapes during a day of heavy rainfall up north, there was nothing else to do other than stay indoors, windows open and play the piano.
The whole EP is beautifully crafted, it has a warmth that’s always very apparent in Wildgoose’s work, a quality that extends to her handwritten newsletter, adorned with pressed flowers around her carefully chosen words. In it she writes:
All art is work in progress, one which you cannot predict the outcome. I believe our thoughts, feelings, mistakes, practices have an energy that is hidden in the work and the listener or viewer can hopefully relate or feel these things too.
This new release is accompanied by original blue cyanotype animations made by dylan friese-greene – he uses green tea to bleach and tone them.