Solarference
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Solarference

Brampton, England, United Kingdom | SELF

Brampton, England, United Kingdom | SELF
Band Folk EDM

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"fRoots magazine"

"Simply genius - It's like the ghost of a voice singing down the ages, dropped into a pool of Wicker-Man-ish, spooked folkstrel clamour."

??Nu folk, folktronic, computrad... call it what you will, sometimes hanging a label on things only serves to confuse. Nick Janaway and Sarah Owen are simply genius when it comes to software and laptop musical management, they surround traditional items with random noises, fragmented sound collages and wraparound sonic washes which, when filtered through their portable computers with unique programming, comes across like some otherworldly soundtrack to a particularly bleak episode of X Files or maybe your favourite haunting. High on the grisly factor, loads of potential misfortune and up on the supernatural, Lips of Clay has a gothic rating to impress. Those not dying are dead or about to be, even lovers have a tough time of it! Am I making all this sound too grim? Hope not, Lips of Clay is actually a bold, experimental collection of strong, narrative songs framed rather than accompanied by electronics which challenge the listener. ??

If there is one fence Solarference are kicking against it's the perceived notion that melody and rhythm are in place to reinforce the vocal - reference 95 percent of the acts you've ever heard. Vocally you could lay it at their door that they sound a bit like Pentangle, a comparison I don't think they'd fight shy of, in fact if pushed Owen and Janaway would probably admit to being traditional singers.

Melodically we're talking a whole different ball game. It's like the ghost of a voice singing down the ages and being dropped into a pool of Wicker Man-ish, spooked folkstrel, clamour. DIY in as much as I really can't think of any who have taken roots and IT along this particular path.??So, the music: Milder and Mulder, a chattering cantering doggerel has repeated beats and Welsh counterpoint sung in a thousand voices by Owen over and around Janaway's earthy tones. O Wake O Wake is a fog of dream ambience pierced gently by a story of night visiting and a strummed guitar hints at latent violence lurking in every second. Tarry Trousers is fairly straight by contrast, a love song, though Cold Blows the Wind is a hundred samples allied to a winding guitar figure and what could be a stuttering radio broadcast. Bobbie Allen - obviously a close relative of Barbara - builds into a montage of delay, repeats and echoes before a shimmering conclusion. Ei Di'r Deryn Du is thrilling, crystal vocals, surging effects and steady pulse all binding to make a glistening finale. ??

- Simon Jones, fRoots magazine, Feb 2013 - fRoots magazine


"fRoots magazine - feature"

"Arresting, atmospheric and thrilling... Solarference are one of the most original acts playing English folk music"

In performance, Solarference don’t come on like your average trad duo: typically, Sarah Owen and Nick Janaway will be standing over twin laptops like some folk version of Kraftwerk or Orbital. The music they create isn’t standard-issue folk either: those laptops are central to their arrangements of traditional songs in settings built from sampled sounds. It’s not the approved way to deliver old ballads, but it’s arresting, atmospheric and often thrilling. Sarah and Nick are performers of electronic music who discovered the joys of folksong, and have mixed the two with increasingly triumphant results since 2008. Don’t imagine, though, that Solarference sing their songs against a rigidly programmed rhythmic background of synthesised noises. As Sarah explains: “It’s all about live performance: everything you hear is made in the moment – we don’t have any backing tracks or anything pre-recorded. We capture fragments of sound and then use our laptops to stretch them, chop them up, or make beats. There’s lots of improvisation, and nothing sounds the same twice!”

All kinds of sounds are used to create their aural backdrops: vocal noises (sung notes, tongue clicks or chatter) and ‘found objects’ from bottles to stones, singing bowls to a musical box. Sometimes the soundscape is rhythmic, sometimes ethereal. It’s important, though, that it enhances the singing, rather than distracting from it. “We try to keep the songs themselves at the heart of the music,” explains Nick. “We're taking them on a journey far away from their origins as unaccompanied person-to-person communication - in the pub, or the cradle - but though there’s lots happening sonically, everything revolves around the song.”

It helps that Sarah and Nick are strong singers. Both work outside Solarference, Sarah as vocal leader in community projects with Wren Music in the West Country, and Nick as a songwriter and sound designer for theatre. They harmonize instinctively, while Nick’s skills on guitar lend a more conventional feel to some arrangements. The songs they choose are classics from the tradition, like Willow Tree, Three Sisters (an ancient riddle ballad) and Tarry Trousers. A highlight is the ghostly Cold Blows the Wind, sung against swirling other-worldly voices, guitar arpeggios and bursts of rhythmic effects. When I heard it live, the song faded into a babble of whispering voices that suggested the spirits of the dead were conversing in their earthen tombs. Check it out on Youtube…

The software Solarference use isn’t off-the-shelf stuff. During his Sound Design degree, Nick learned to make custom sound programmes: “It was a creative explosion - I could design performance software that became a personalised instrument. We’ve built it up over several years, and it’s still growing.” Sarah, a self-confessed Luddite as a teenager, admits: “It’s been a struggle to learn the technology but, having opened my ears to the music that’s everywhere in the environment, I knew I wanted to work electronically with it and take music to the limits.”

But how did traditional song come into their lives? Sarah’s Dad was into folk-rock, and “used to sing us to sleep with folk songs from his favourite 70’s bands, which was spellbinding.” She studied classical voice at school, but was told she didn’t sound sufficiently ‘trained’. “Working with Wren Music, I found that in folk there was no ‘correct’ sound, and I could make a song my own, knowing that people over centuries had sung their own versions before me. I feel I’m connecting with a shared humanity.” Nick agrees: “My voice is stronger and freer singing traditional songs than anything else - it feels anchored by the song's roots.”

Solarference see no conflict between the humanity of the old songs and the electronica they use to present them. “The technology's a tool for us to make the sounds we imagine - it isn't the point in itself,” Nick explains, and Sarah concurs: “I understand why people might see the two as opposing, but technology is just what humans make. People have always made folk music with what they have around them, and computers are part of the world we now live in.”

Lovers of traditional song have been broadly approving. “They can still pick up on that strong musical heart and engage with the songs we perform,” suggests Nick, “even though they're not accompanied with conventional instruments - people often say that the unfamiliar settings give the songs a new life. But fans of electronic music can get drawn in by the soul and the humanity of the songs we choose, and the live aspect of our work. We've witnessed some electronic performances that were totally alienating, but using traditional songs makes our experimental music way more accessible - we want to bring both musical worlds to wider audiences.“

Solarference have just released their first album, titled Lips of Clay. How did they pin down for posterity a single studio performance, when the whole point of their live show is spontaneity? “It hit us, how different the art forms of recording and performing are, and the different listener expectations,” says Sarah. “We’ve tried to reflect the live show, but also to create different colours and textures for each song, unique to the album.” Nick agrees: “It's been odd trying to decide what the album version of each song should be like!” Even in the studio they maintained their principles of change, evolution and accident: “Once we were tapping our fingernails on teacups, the pitch changing as we drank the tea, and we so loved the effect that we recreated that idea in the studio on Willow Tree, using pint glasses.”

Solarference are one of the most original acts playing English folk music, and there’s no reason they can’t carry on evolving. As Sarah says, “I’ve found there are no limits if you don’t set them!”

- Brian Peters, fRoots magazine, October 2012 - fRoots Magazine


"Fatea Music"

"This duo has rocketed way up there with this quite phenomenal debut"

** Winner of Fatea's Award for innovation in roots music**

As far as original English folk music goes, this duo has rocketed way up there with this quite phenomenal debut. The modern 'folk-tronica' pair Nick Janaway and Sarah Owen mix pre-existing samples, using their laptops to stretch or chop up sounds, and even create beats out of them. Sarah and Nick harmonize their vocals instinctively and their otherwordly sound is put into perspective when combined with Nick's skills using an acoustic guitar. The album is self-released and has been praised by electronica and folk fans alike; the songs have a modern flair but remain true to the heart of traditional songs such as 'Tarry Trousers' and 'O Wake O Wake'.

Even though conventional instruments aren't used, the unusual way of performing these songs gives them a new lease of life and ensures that no rendition is the same twice, as they don't follow rigid patterns or a set sheet of music- Solarference love to improvise, using ethereal vocal noises, including clicking tongues and chattering, along with 'found objects', ranging from bottles and glasses to sticks and stones.

This genre-defying album is the result of two greatly innovative minds paired with powerful, emotional voices and a warmth and passion which shines through every song; whether you are a folk enthusiast or an electronica fan, I can guarantee there's something here for everyone to enjoy.

Sophie Babur-Puplett, Fatea - Fatea


"Financial Times: Four Stars"

This literally home-made album sees Sarah Owen and Nick Janaway remaking traditional folk with more computer power than GCHQ, though his guitar and her dulcimer and their interwoven voices stop this from being a merely virtual exercise. The snatches of found sound are fashionably Hauntological, suiting the material about the overlapping worlds of the living and the dead; at times, the whole fabric of sound stretches and gapes.

- David Honigmann, Financial Times - Financial Times


"Bright Young Folk"

Lips Of Clay is a stunning album, which seamlessly joins contemporary electronic music to traditional folk music"

Solarference have managed to fuse electronics and folk song without deterring from what is arguably at the heart of the music -the stories behind the songs. If anything, the electronics enhance the story and draw you into the world of each song - helped along by the stunning voices of Sarah Owen and Nick Janaway.

Each track layers up vocal sounds, harmonies and a plethora of percussive sounds to support the melodies, many of which will be familiar to listeners. Along with vocal sounds and body percussion, the duo use glass bottles, music boxes, pebbles, tin foil and seemingly many more items, each of which is cleverly manipulated to create a sonic world for each track.

Cold Blows the Wind is particularly haunting, with stuttering words and vocal sounds blending perfectly with the guitar to provide a hypnotic backing track to support Nick and Sarah’s crystal clear vocals. Ei Di’r Deryn Du, with its ethereal music box beginning and build up of vocal harmonies provides a beautifully delicate, yet slightly unsettling finale to the album.

Lips Of Clay is a stunning album, which seamlessly joins contemporary electronic music to traditional folk music. A word to the wise though - this album is definitely best enjoyed through a pair of quality speakers or headphones.

Lizzi Michael, Bright Young Folk - Bright Young Folk


"Songlines magazine"

"Cecil Sharp goes electronica... A fluid approach to an ancient tradition."?

Nick Janaway and Sarah Owen bring home-built computer tech to the world of traditional folk. The results are fascinating, though the elecronic side of things is confined more to the music than to words and voices. They take refrains of well-known traditional songs to reorient them along new lines, with glitchy vocal effects, loopings and layerings. But they tend more to a conventional style of English unaccompanied singing. The two started out in 2008, fusing live electronics with vocals, using their own audio software to turn found sounds, voices and instruments into a live sea of electronics and effects. Their album debut features nine traditional songs - the likes of 'Higher Germanie' ' Milder and Mulder' (a Welsh-English version of 'The Cutty Wren') and 'O Wake O Wake', in which the clicks and table-taps of found and treated percussion weave in and out of a woozy bank of straight and laptop-manipulated voices. At times is sounds like there's a ghost in the room on supporting vocals. The 17th century broadside 'Tarry Trousers' opens with a music box and an alleyway whistle to tell the tale of a girl and her sailor bold, while 'Cold Blows the Wind' (or 'The Unquiet Grave') dating at least from the late Medieval period, flutters with drum'n'bass percussion, cut-up vocals and a frosty otherworld of electronica under the interlocking lead voices. Folktronica is not new - Tunng and FourTet cam before - but they barely touched the traditional repertoire. The appeal of Solarference is the mutability of their on-stage tech, suggesting a fluid approach to an ancient and fluid tradition. ??Tim Cumming, Songlines - Songlines magazine


"Spiral Earth"

"Totally Intoxicating... This project has reached a magical fruition. May mornings will never feel quite the same again."

Tradition versus technology. Let battle commence! Actually, this album doesn't live up to the billing, conflict isn't an issue. Instead, we have a crystallization of ancient and modern as circuit boards sing with the art of storytelling and familiar melodies morph into a world of wonderment.

Reverberating with the work of other sound manipulators - the realms of Dead Can Dance, Aphex Twin and Jim Moray are recalled - Sarah Owen and Nick Janaway feed their hungry laptops with snippets from conventional instruments, vocals, and "sound objects" to rejuvenate nine traditional songs with their own software.

After years of development, stage experimentation, and avoidance of the more accepted forms of sampling and looping, the duo have reached an organic state of expression full of possibilities. As shards of flickering colour spark into life a seamless momentum is set in motion where nothing feels superfluous - it's less of a sound collage approach, than say, D J Shadow, and there's none of the metallic jarring qualities associated with the electronic genre.

Despite all this fearless achievement the songs still needed an expressive narrative, and they don't disappoint: the sonorous vocals are the centerpiece and foundation of the tracks with Nick and Sarah working in perfect unison. "Milder and Mulder" is a particularly spectacular fusion of Nick's baritone and a Welsh contribution from Sarah, soaring above. Whereas "Cold Blows The Wind" is accompanied by a choir of celestial beings and chattering voices. Totally intoxicating.

This project has reached a magical fruition. May mornings will never feel quite the same again.

David Kushar, Spiral Earth, Nov 2012 - Spiral Earth


Discography

"Lips of Clay"
- 2012 Album (self-released)

"Stranger at the Gate"
- 2011 EP (self-released)

Photos

Bio

Solarference (Nick Janaway and Sarah Owen) perform a captivating genre-defying mix of folk song and live electronics.

Taking English and Welsh folk songs as a starting point, the duo uses their home-made audio software to transform live sounds - of voices, instruments, and sound objects - into organic soundscapes for the songs to inhabit. Nothing is pre-recorded: the transformation is on-going and entirely live.

The show is a thrilling, theatrical exploration of musical possibilities in the digital age, yet rooted in local tradition: D-I-Y experimentalism combines with sonic mastery, whilst resonating a deep empathy for the commonalities of human experience.