Norfolk based electronic duo Broads have teamed up with songstress Milly Hirst to release an instrumental album based around Norfolk landscapes and culture.
This six-track record, which is supported by Arts Council England, is titled Ollust and will be released on March 6 on CD, 12" vinyl and as a digital download and on iTunes and Spotify.
The first single Happisburgh, which was released on January 31, is built around ideas of a town disappearing into the sea, history being rendered in front of us and future folk tales falling into place - which has an accompanying video filmed and edited by Mark Jennings.
Since Mark Jennings joined James Ferguson as Broads in 2017, they have released 2 albums of mostly electronic song experiments - 2018's Field Theory and 2019's A Small Box Over a Global Goal.
For Ollust (which means Always in the local dialect), Broads teamed up with long-time collaborator Milly Hirst to take another leap into the unknown - an almost-entirely analogue album built around pianos, drones, field recordings and wordless vocals.
"The tracks take inspiration from Norfolk locations, landscapes and culture. In preparing for the album, we had lots of days out in obscure locations across the county where I made hours of field recordings and Mark took video footage, which he used as a guide for writing his piano parts at home," says James Ferguson.
"The county of Norfolk is rich in history, contradiction and oddity, and the three of us wanted to create a document of all of these things. It's a beautiful, frustrating, exciting, forward/ backward place to live, and after almost a quarter of a century making music here it seemed high time to pay tribute to the environment that has shaped our sound and our approach to art over such a long time."
With support from Arts Council England, Broads and Milly Hurst will embark on a six-date tour of the locations referenced in the track titles, together with visual artist Liam Roberts, who will manipulate local archive film footage live at each performance.
TOUR DATES:
April 2 - Live at The Octagon Chapel, Norwich
April 3 - Live at Thetford Guildhall
April 4 - Live at Oulton Chapel
April 5 - Live at Strangers' Hall, Norwich (2 sets)
April 10 - Live at St. Mary's Church Rooms, Happisburgh
April 11 - Live at Dereham Memorial Hall
- Ollust is available to pre-order from Broads' Bandcamp page
- Tickets to their shows are available from WeGotTickets.com
- For more local music check out our dedicated page every Thursday in the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News, our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all other streaming platforms and follow Enjoy Music More on Facebook and Twitter
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