Just let it all wash over you, with this 50-minute mix of mellow sounds.
Pye Corner Audio get things flowing with the opening and title track of Lake Deep Memory, an album inspired by Martin Jenkins' trip to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala in 2024. Ostensibly there to play a festival, it clearly left a lasting impression, as evidenced in this immersive piece of music..
Still Water 2 was released in July 2025, the seventh in Richard Norris' Music For Healing: Oceans series, which he accurately describes as "a balm for the soul". The slow, gentle piano plinks are gorgeous.
If you think you know The Woodentops, think again. Rolo McGinty can pretty much turn his hand to anything, musically speaking, including this tribute to the river Thames, released last month. The full-length version clocks in at nearly 16 minutes; I've included just over half here, to encourage you to get yourself over to Bandcamp and buy it.
Zi Lan Liao is married to Jah Wobble and when her harp met his bass, magic happened. I discovered an extract of 34-minute suite The River from 1998 on the superlative Jah Wobble compilation I Could Have Been A Contender in 2004. Even in truncated form, the epic scale of the music is not diminished.
Who else to follow this than Kate Bush? Lake Tahoe is from her (to date) last album of original material, and one of her longest songs, nudging over the 11-minute mark. Piano, an angelic duet and a lead voice steeped in a lifetime of stories, both lived and discovered, all in perfect harmony as Kate recounts the tale of a Victorian woman who fell into Lake Tahoe, only to rise as a spirit.
Have a beautiful Sunday.
1) Lake Deep Memory: Pye Corner Audio (2025)
2) Still Water 2: Richard Norris (2025)
3) T H A M E S: The Woodentops (2026)
4) The River: Jah Wobble presents Zi Lan Liao (1998)
5) Lake Tahoe: Kate Bush ft. Stefan Roberts & Michael Wood (2011)
2004: I Could Have Been A Contender: Anthology: 4
2011: 50 Words For Snow: 5
2025: Lake Deep Memory: 1
2025: Music For Healing: Oceans 7: 2
2026: T H A M E S EP: 3
Interesting fact. "When her harp met his bass, magic happened" was part of the original intro for Hart To Hart. It was only dropped and replaced with "when they met it was murder" very late in the day
ReplyDeleteI was thinking exactly the same things when I was typing those lines, Ernie, to the extent that I could hear Max’s gravelly voiceover!
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