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JOHNNY FLYNN

Johnny Flynn & Robert Macfarlane

The Moon Also Rises

    Johnny Flynn’s sixth album, and the second co-written with his friend Robert Macfarlane gathers songs that Johnny and Robert have written together since finishing their first joint album, Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021). At its heart are the oldest themes of all: death and renewal, darkness and light. The first five tracks are songs of burial, shadows and memory, while the final four are songs of awakening, light and love. The album turns around a central song, ‘The Sun Also Rises’, which stands with a foot in both dark and light.

    Fuses poetry, story, landscape, history, nature and myth into a series of rich, strange songlines that criss-cross time and place, joining winter to spring, ancient to present and birth to death. As the Sun sets, so the Moon rises as its echo; as one light dies, another, altogether different light is born.

    Partly recorded in an old Methodist chapel –now the home of Johnny and Rob’s friends, Cosmo and Flora Sheldrake.

    Produced by Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Marika Hackman).

    BIOG
    Johnny Flynn is a singer, composer, musician and actor. His musical releases to date include the studio albums A Larum (2008), Been Listening (2010), Country Mile (2013), Sillion (2017) and Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021). He has released two full live albums, Live in Washington DC (2014) and Live at the Roundhouse (2018) and various EPs and soundtracks. As well as touring the world with his band, Johnny regularly composes music for film, TV and theatre –– including work for period instruments at the Globe Theatre. Johnny’s recent acting projects include Hangmen and True West (for which he also composed the music) on stage and Emma, Beast and The Dig on film. He is currently appearing as Richard Burton in Jack Thorne’s sell-out play The Motive and the Cue, directed by Sam Mendes.

    Robert Macfarlane is a writer of books about nature, people, place and landscape including Underland (2019), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012) and, with Jackie Morris, The Lost Words (2017) and The Lost Spells (2020). He also writes films (inc. Mountain and River, both starring Willem Dafoe), operas, plays and screenplays, and collaborates widely, including with artist Stanley Donwood, and musicians Cosmo Sheldrake, Jocelyn Pook and Karine Polwart. His work has been widely adapted for film, stage, television, radio, dance, music and performance, and his books have been published in more than thirty languages. In 2023 he was awarded the inaugural Weston International Award for Non-Fiction.


    STAFF COMMENTS

    Barry says: A rousing collection of songs from the neo-folk troubador Johnny Flynn (whose Detectorists theme is forever etched in my brain) and frequent collaboration partner Robert Macfarlane. It's a warming, bucolic selection that's every bit as beautiful as 2021's stunning 'Lost In The Cedar Wood'.

    TRACK LISTING

    Side A
    1. Uncanny Valley
    2. Song With No Name
    3. Burial Blessing
    4. No Matter The Weight
    5. Coins For The Eyes
    Side B
    6. The Sun Also Rises
    7. The Wild Hunt
    8. Through The Misty With You
    9. Year-Long Winter
    10. River, Mountain And Love

    Johnny Flynn & Robert Macfarlane

    Lost In The Cedar Wood

      ‘Lost In The Cedar Wood’, Johnny Flynn’s much-anticipated fifth album, is co-written with his friend Robert Macfarlane.

      Johnny and Robert began work on the album in the first weeks of the pandemic, wanting to make music that sang of those dangerous, disorienting spring days; when birdsong was brighter –– and the sense of bewilderment more powerful –– than any of us had known before.

      They drew inspiration in part from The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest surviving work of world literature; an epic poem from Ancient Mesopotamia that contains the earliest version of the Flood Myth. To Johnny and Robert, Gilgamesh resonated eerily with the present moment –– and it catalysed their song-writing.

      For Gilgamesh is a story of friendship, love, loss, grief, bad governance and good dreaming; of natural disaster and environmental crisis. It also contains the first recorded act of human destruction of the natural world: when Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel to the Sacred Cedar Wood, slay the guardian spirit of the forest, and cut down the trees with their axes, thereby bringing catastrophe upon themselves.

      Johnny and Robert wrote the album between March 2020 and February 2021, during a year in which we all wandered unsure of our path, lost in the cedar wood. The songs were composed in large part as a correspondence, through a back-and-forth of notebook pages, voice-recordings and WhatsApp-messages, at a time when lockdowns made meeting in person impossible. The first eight songs were recorded in an off-grid cottage deep in a Hampshire forest, with the sounds of chainsaws felling trees drifting in through the windows along with the birdsong.

      The result is an album at once urgent and ancient, which fuses poetry, landscape, myth and music into something unique. These are songs that ring with hope, love and sadness –– and one need not know anything about The Epic of Gilgamesh to be touched by them.


      STAFF COMMENTS

      Barry says: A beautifully evocative and wonderfully weighted collaboration between two of the most talented voices in folk music today. Both Flynn and Macfarlane are right at home here, crafting warm melodies and richly woven harmonies around a solid instrumental core.

      TRACK LISTING

      Side A
      1. Ten Degrees Of Strange - Johnny Flynn
      2. The World To Come - Johnny Flynn
      3. Gods And Monsters - Robert Macfarlane
      4. Bonedigger - Robert Macfarlane
      5. I Can’t Swim There - Robert Macfarlane

      Side B
      6. Nether - Robert Macfarlane
      7. Flood In The Desert - Johnny Flynn
      8. Tree Rings - Johnny Flynn
      9. Enkidu Walked - Robert Macfarlane
      10. Home And Dry - Robert Macfarlane
      11. Ferryman - Robert Macfarlane

      Johnny Flynn And The Sussex Wit

      Live At The Roundhouse

        ‘Live At The Roundhouse’ is an electric performance of ten years’ worth of songs; recorded without overdubs, it pays homage to the past whilst pointing propitiously to the group’s future. The album also features a bonus studio cut; the much requested and never released 3-verse rendition of Johnny’s ‘Detectorists’ theme.

        Live At The Roundhouse’ is 24 tracks long and pulled from a decade’s worth of music. Fans will hear renditions of songs from Johnny’s “Masterclass” (4/5 The Independent) debut album ‘A Larum’, sophomore ‘Been Listening’, an album “radical in its honesty” (8/10 Drowned in Sound), ‘Country Mile’, “an extremely clever and nuanced record” (Mojo) and his most recent effort, ‘Sillion’, which explored the idea of man’s endeavour to connect with the earth while separated from it; “Another exploratory and remarkably high-caliber LP” (AllMusic 4.5/5). The album also features a bonus studio cut; the much requested and never released 3-verse rendition of Johnny’s ‘Detectorists’ theme. Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit are without a doubt one of the most consistently exhilarating live bands around, inspiring an undying devotion among fans and peers who will cherish ‘Live At The Roundhouse’ for its gritty and impassioned renditions of now-classic songs. 


        STAFF COMMENTS

        Barry says: One of the most entrancing talents around, Johnny Flynn mixes brimming psychedelic grooves with shimmering folky acousticry, running through grooves into a cascade of rhythm, and their live show is a perfect encapsulation of this stunning musicianship and unmistakable energy.

        TRACK LISTING

        Disc: 1
        1. Raising The Dead
        2. Lost And Found
        3. In The Deepest
        4. The Night My Piano Upped And Died
        5. Barleycorn
        6. Howl
        7. Murmuration
        8. Brown Trout Blues
        9. Country Mile
        10. Hard Road
        11. Wandering Aengus
        12. Jefferson's Torch
        13. The Landlord
        14. Cold Bread

        Disc: 2
        1. The Wrote And The Writ
        2. The Water
        3. Tickle Me Pink
        4. Introducing The Band
        5. The Box
        6. Heart Sunk Hank
        7. Detectorists
        8. Fol-De-Rol
        9. Eyeless In Holloway
        10. Detectorists (Full Studio Version)


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