Thursday 11 May 2017

LISTEN: Tom Hobden & Eliot James - 'Housman's Theme'

If you've been following my posts for a while you'll probably have grasped that I'm quite a fan of Noah & The Whale and have been following their solo endeavours since the band split a couple of years ago. I've seen the members of the band in various guises since the split (all except frontman Charlie but I'm off to see his debut solo album stage show in June) and can't wait for bassist Matt Owens' show with his band Little Mammoths in Oxford tomorrow night.

It's been great seeing what violinist and keys player Tom Hobden has been getting up to, performing all around the world with Mumford & Sons, as I can honestly say that he's one of my favourite musicians and a big part of the reason that I have come to appreciate strings in a live performance so much. Excitingly then, Tom has teamed up with fellow composer Eliot James, whom he met back in 2007 when they worked on the debut Noah album, and collaborated on an LP, Roam.


Aiming to tackle an issue they see in a lack of opportunities and appreciation for orchestral strings within pop music, the project was born after the pair exchanged demos of orchestral and score material last year. The first track from the project is Housman's Theme, a soaring and beautiful classical piece and quite a departure from what I'd usually share on here - but lyric-less music has been featuring in my headphones a lot to get through my last essays, especially the dissertation, and this is stunning!



Talking about their intentions for the record, the pair say that: "True to the album’s name we set out with a hunger for exploring new musical territory. With an orchestra on hand, we gladly lost ourselves at times in the wide plains of English Romanticism but at the same time were ever aware of the here and now, and the importance of forging new lines."

The record, Roam, is due for release on 16th June through Village Green Recordings, and you can give the project a like on Facebook (here) to stay up to date! 

No comments:

Post a Comment