DL's Media/Reviews
JONATHAN DAY
Jonathan Day, from Shropshire, Wales, has taken his music into the Zen type of sense. The things that accompanies his path, inspires and interprets, helps him to settle his thoughts and put those experiences into his everyday living. He grasps after the ephemeral and barely intuited moments of brilliance that pepper each day - knowing that something - perhaps impossible to ever put into words - was there, but never knowing what is was. What he wants to accomplish is to make music that is honest and that rings a bell with him when he plays it or listens back to it.
Jonathan has travelled extensively in his life - to Africa, around Europe and back to England as a child, and extensively since. Listening to music and joining in with musicians has opened his ears - learning from Gagaku players in Japan, through Egyptian gypsy players on the NIle north of Luxor through to Reggae players in the mountains of Sri Lanka. They, in a way, refracted the presence and sound of his homeland back to his soul. Travelling around the world to arrive back in his own woodlands above the river and seeing it in a new way reflects something more beautiful than ever imagined. He is profoundly concerned with accessing and dwelling in the deeper well of his heritage as a human, and a human that comes from generations of people located in the landscape of my home. His first album ‘Carved in Bone’ was very much about the landscape where he lives. This new album is a record of taking that sensibility out into the world, and interacting it within a series of places.
Jonathan’s new CD. Title/LABEL/Catalog No: (Atlantic Drifter/Niimiika/(Niimiika 151). Will be released on Friday, the 11th of September, 2015 for UK distribution.
In addition to Jonathan Day, his musical support comes courtesy of Simon Smith – string bass, Gavin Monaghan – tremolo guitar on ‘Sita’s’, St. Sofia Cathedral Choir, Minsk on ‘A Book of Hours’ and Krisit Link and the Links on ‘Innocence Again’.
Atlantic Drifter is the brand new album from JONATHAN DAY. It has a distinctly international focus. The reception for the début album was excellent. ‘Carved In Bone’ is: “Just wonderful”; – BBC, “Visionary”; – Roots magazine, “Exceptional” – FRUK, “Great, poetic and elemental”; – Q magazine, “like plugging your heart directly into the source of human power”; – Tony May, and Jonathan has “a voice like Scott Walker and Jim Morrison that is dark as chocolate on a still night”; – Stirrings Magazine. This reception led to Jonathan touring internationally in the US, Finland, Greece, Thailand, Hong Kong and recently for the first time to China. The irony of a reclusive man ending up so much on the road has led to this brand new album project.
Its songs were made on the quiet Danish island of Rømø, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North America, in a tenement in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks where Carolina meets the Atlantic, at the white Abbey of Kindness in the Sangre de Christo Mountains near Santa Fe, in Helsinki and in Minsk, Belarus. Bob Harris (BBC Radio) called the project “stunning” and Catherine van Ruhland wrote: “Long nights with dancers, poets and painters and long journeys are held here in the songs. His work takes its heart from time, silence and the mad, mundane and quietly beautiful vision of those who share the road”.
Unusually, the project started with the release of a book ‘Postcards from the Road’. Jonathan has always been interested in the energy between music, writing and images so the book is made of stories and photographs from the American leg of his ‘Carved in Bone’ tour (published by University of Chicago Press). New York’s ART news magazine called it “Seductive, a complex and poetic mixing of text and imageary in search of a certain American quality – one of this summer’s best photo books” and IQ magazine wrote “This is a captivating and beautiful book which reminds us of how fascinating it can be to view the world from an outsider’s perspective”.
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‘Café in the Valley of the Fire Church – Meeting people each morning at a café is an interesting way of finding out about the different personalities that live there but it is time to move on and it’s hard to say goodbye.
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‘Sea Full of Birds’ – It is a wonder when silence in objects are felt as you gaze but what are their true names?
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‘A Book of Hours’ – Through a haze you sense distant objects. You still wander with many memories and write them done in your book of hours.
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‘Ton Tussa Solas – Something is seen and felt that wins your heart. Sometimes it is a comedy sometimes pain but deep down as you watch the ocean and the scenery it is seen in awe and silence.
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‘Sita’s Last Dance – Sparkling darkness, softness and warmness, a spirit is hiding. In its mildness it still rages.
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‘An Onnagata Kami Infest My Forest’ – At night time the water crackles and you listen within the dark sky. What does it say and to whom? The sun rises and, again, the water falls from the wave.
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‘Shallow Ground’ – On a ship your heart yearns for the land you love again. Traveling for miles you think of and pray to God to get you home safely. Love is sent.
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‘Innocence Again’ (written by Robert Lake and Paul Wassall) – Dreams of something more than what was unspoken. Even the rain, castles, ships and Hollywood make for empty hearts but one always waits for the innocence again.
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‘The Darkling Sky’ – Thoughts of what was but is still felt. The stars still shine in the darkling sky but what always remains is the light.
“Music signposts the transcendent. It touches the hem of the beyond - the thing we all recognize and understand and in which we share, but which we cannot speak about.” ~ John Corbett/Jonathan Day.
Jonathan’s music brings more than just a voice and a guitar. It brings a richness of multiple layers. To find out more about Jonathan go to:
Denise L. @DL7855
