Nine years on from the widely-acclaimed Iron Stone recording, Scottish singer-songwriter, harpist and guitarist Robin Williamson returns with a new album of self-penned pieces – thoughtful and touching meditations on love, destiny, the natural world, roads travelled, and the daily pleasures of being alive today. The album finds Williamson in fine voice and in best creative form on his diverse instruments, drawing inspiration also from the ingenious improvisational input of violist Mat Maneri (further developing the association initiated on Skirting The River Road ) and percussionist Ches Smith (last heard on ECM with Tim Berne’s Snakeoil band). Trusting In The Rising Light was recorded in Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, in January 2014.
Trusting In The Rising Light
Robin Williamson
Acht Jahre nach seiner allenthalben gerühmten Einspielung “Iron Stone” kehrt der schottische Singer-Songwriter, Harfenist und Gitarrist Robin Williamson mit einem neuen Album aus Eigenkompositionen zurück – gedankenvollen und berührenden Meditationen über die Liebe, das Schicksal, die Natur, die Wege seiner Reisen, und die alltäglichen Freuden des Lebens in der heutigen Zeit. Williamson präsentiert sich auf dem Album bestens bei Stimme und in kreativer Hochform an seinen verschiedenen Instrumenten. Dabei bezieht er zusätzliche Inspiration aus den kongenialen Improvisationsbeiträgen von Bratschist Mat Maneri (eine Verbindung vertiefend, die auf „Skirting The River Road“ begann), und Perkussionist Ches Smith (der zuletzt als Mitglied von Tim Bernes „Snakeoil“-Band auf ECM zu hören war). „Trusting The Rising Lights“ wurde im Januar 2014 in den Rockfield Studio in Wales aufgenommen.
- 1Trusting in the Rising Light
05:29 - 2Roads
05:23 - 3Our Evening Walk
05:41 - 4The Cards
03:02 - 5Just West of Monmouth
03:35 - 6Night Comes Quick in LA
04:43 - 7Alive Today
04:20 - 8These Hands
02:03 - 9Swan
04:14 - 10Your Kisses
03:59 - 11Falling Snow
04:22 - 12The Islands of the Inner Firth
04:12
If Williamson has, inevitably, lost some of the childlike glee of his younger self, as expressed in Incredible String Band music, he’s lost none of his wide-eyed wonder in everyday existence, and ‘Trusting in the Rising Light’ is his most personal collection of songs to date, his music peculiarly, luminously self-sufficient. His inflection is inimitable, but his intonation precise. Where Williamson’s last three albums drew for lyrics upon the work of Welsh poets (Henry Vaughan, Llywarch Hen and Taliesen on ‘The Seed-At-Zero’ (ECM, 2000)), and the writings of American visionary Walt Whitman and London mystic William Blake (on’Skirting the River Road’),’Trusting in the Rising Light’ comprises all-original material. And that’s no bad thing: Williamson’s own lyric poetry, with its clear-eyed focus on earthly spirituality, withstands any comparison to those literary forebears. As with the lyrics, there’s a pared-back, self-reliant aspect to Williamson’s new music. An often eclectic multi-instrumentalist, on this album he restricts his own palette to Celtic harp, guitar, Hardanger Fiddle and whistles. Maneri plays only viola. They are complemented only by Ches Smith on vibraphones, drums, gongs and percussion instruments.
Tim Owen, Dalston Sound
Williamson’s voice has toughened over the decades, ranging raga-saxophone-seamlessly here, from gruff and deep to shimmering falsetto. Reader – get this CD and rejoice in a unique and veritable treasury of truly jazzwise hymns, at once deeply ancient and unimpeachably modern.
Michael Horovitz, Jazzwise
The unity of Williamson’s lyrics with the jazz-infused accompaniment makes for an intensely emotive album. Maneri’s and Smith’s intuitive compositions respond organically to Williamson’s vocals, concluding in a beautiful album that engages both the mind and the soul.
Hannah Clugston, Aesthetica
The new disc shifts the focus from the work of other writers and poets exclusively onto Robin’s own songs and sung poetry, imparting a similarly free-thinking approach to a dozen newly composed works within his own prolific canon. In order to help realise his special, individual artistic vision, Robin has re-enlisted American viola player Mat Maneri, with whom he’d collaborated on the CD’s two immediate predecessors, 2001’s ‘Skirting The River Road’ and 2005’s ‘The Iron Stone’. For this latest project, Robin has also engaged jazz drummer/percussionist Ches Smith (who, you may recall, records for ECM with Tim Berne’s Snakeoil as well as working with several other combos in the fields of alt-rock and jazz). Ches plays a selection of gongs and cymbals as well as drumkit and, interestingly, vibraphone, the latter instrument imparting a strange blend of heat and cool to the musical climate of the songs on which it appears (its sugary, succulent blocks of sound both complementing and contrasting with the alternately angular and mournful microtonal meanderings of Mat’s viola). Robin himself is in really excellent voice, every word and nuance finely judged and compellingly enunciated, and while the contours of his melodies can often seem wandersome and wayward (in the nicest possible way), the maturity and unshakable confidence in his delivery will invariably win over any listener who is prepared to concentrate and follow the progression of the imagery through the course of the improvisatory musical argument. […] ‘Trusting In The Rising Light’ is a seriously haunting album, a work of satisfying depth whose precision of execution […] embodies a true warmth and humanity. It just has to be counted amongst Robin’s best work to date.
David Kidman, Folkradio
Trusting In The Rising Light is the fourth ECM album from Scottish singer, songwriter, harpist and guitarist Robin Williamson. Its predecessors – The Seed-at-Zero (recorded 2000), Skirting The River Road (2001) and The Iron Stone (2005) – were concerned, in different measure, with responses to the work of poets including Dylan Thomas, Henry Vaughan, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Thomas Wyatt, John Clare and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Trusting In The Rising Light, however, shifts the focus onto Robin’s own songs and sung poetry. Here we have twelve new pieces, touching and thoughtful meditations on life, love, destiny, roads travelled and untraveled, the natural world, the glittering city, and the rhythm of the sea.
Williamson, born 1943 in Edinburgh and a working musician for 55 years, is in fine voice as he enters his eighth decade, his harp and guitar playing is assured and inventive, and his creative curiosity as undiminished as the sense of wonder evident in his song texts. His ECM albums have continued to explore the nexus of roots and free experiment which made his old group, the Incredible String Band, so intriguing and his collaborations with improvising musicians have opened up new and broader possibilities in this regard. Of the singer/songwriters who came to public attention in Britain in the 1960s, none has more creatively mined traditions to shape new music.
Trusting In The Rising Light finds him working with two US musicians, who joined him in Wales for this session recorded in January 2014, at Monmouth’s famous Rockfield Studio. Mat Maneri was a key contributor to Skirting The River Road and The Iron Stone, and he has toured in Europe with Williamson. A prodigiously gifted player, Maneri can shadow Robin’s vocal ornamentation through any style of music. “Our Evening Walk”, built on a sruti-box drone and a scalar melody shared between Robin’s Hardanger fiddle and Mat’s viola, leans towards raga. “These Hands of Mine” hints at Grappelli and jazz of the swing era. “Just West of Monmouth” veers between abstract sound painting and spontaneous underlining of Williamson’s imagery. “Your Kisses”, on the other hand, has a rockier drive than most Williamson music of recent vintage, with viola tracing a feverish path against Robin’s bluesy guitar.
Maneri and Ches Smith also have a proven rapport – latterly they’ve been working together in Smith’s new trio with Craig Taborn. Ches, last heard on ECM with Tim Berne’s Snakeoil band, was brought to the Williamson session to play primarily vibraphone, as he does on the piece “Swan”, for instance, conjuring shimmering reflections of the sailing bird “joining the worlds of air and water”. But as the session progressed the drum kit came into play, perhaps most strikingly on “Night Comes Quick In LA” a duet for free drums and bardic beat poet, a song of experience with some of Robin’s tersest commentary: “What a shadow is fame / Fame pollutes the heart / Fame’s toxic fume / Fatal fame treads the old alley”. Much better to trust in the rising light, the title track suggests, and “the way of the waves, their rise and fall.”
Where most of the album incorporates improvising into the trio settings of the songs, the single entirely solo track “The Cards” was also a spontaneous gesture in the studio. Robin’s melody for the song is based upon the traditional Irish harp air “The Coolin”, and is explored on the guitar for the first time here, as fresh and as daring as the rest of this remarkable recording.
Williamson, born 1943 in Edinburgh and a working musician for 55 years, is in fine voice as he enters his eighth decade, his harp and guitar playing is assured and inventive, and his creative curiosity as undiminished as the sense of wonder evident in his song texts. His ECM albums have continued to explore the nexus of roots and free experiment which made his old group, the Incredible String Band, so intriguing and his collaborations with improvising musicians have opened up new and broader possibilities in this regard. Of the singer/songwriters who came to public attention in Britain in the 1960s, none has more creatively mined traditions to shape new music.
Trusting In The Rising Light finds him working with two US musicians, who joined him in Wales for this session recorded in January 2014, at Monmouth’s famous Rockfield Studio. Mat Maneri was a key contributor to Skirting The River Road and The Iron Stone, and he has toured in Europe with Williamson. A prodigiously gifted player, Maneri can shadow Robin’s vocal ornamentation through any style of music. “Our Evening Walk”, built on a sruti-box drone and a scalar melody shared between Robin’s Hardanger fiddle and Mat’s viola, leans towards raga. “These Hands of Mine” hints at Grappelli and jazz of the swing era. “Just West of Monmouth” veers between abstract sound painting and spontaneous underlining of Williamson’s imagery. “Your Kisses”, on the other hand, has a rockier drive than most Williamson music of recent vintage, with viola tracing a feverish path against Robin’s bluesy guitar.
Maneri and Ches Smith also have a proven rapport – latterly they’ve been working together in Smith’s new trio with Craig Taborn. Ches, last heard on ECM with Tim Berne’s Snakeoil band, was brought to the Williamson session to play primarily vibraphone, as he does on the piece “Swan”, for instance, conjuring shimmering reflections of the sailing bird “joining the worlds of air and water”. But as the session progressed the drum kit came into play, perhaps most strikingly on “Night Comes Quick In LA” a duet for free drums and bardic beat poet, a song of experience with some of Robin’s tersest commentary: “What a shadow is fame / Fame pollutes the heart / Fame’s toxic fume / Fatal fame treads the old alley”. Much better to trust in the rising light, the title track suggests, and “the way of the waves, their rise and fall.”
Where most of the album incorporates improvising into the trio settings of the songs, the single entirely solo track “The Cards” was also a spontaneous gesture in the studio. Robin’s melody for the song is based upon the traditional Irish harp air “The Coolin”, and is explored on the guitar for the first time here, as fresh and as daring as the rest of this remarkable recording.
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