Following their critically acclaimed 2019 debut album Unfurl, Hidden Notes Records are happy to announce the release of the multi-award-nominated experimental/contemporary folk string duo Fran & Flora’s sophomore full-length album, Precious Collection.

Released on Friday 12th April 2024, this album, produced by the duo themselves, explodes in myriad directions expressing the richness of the long-standing collaboration between Francesca Ter-Berg (cello/vocals/electronics) and Flora Curzon (violin/vocals/electronics). With Klezmer and Yiddish song as the predominant inspiration for the record, Precious Collection defies convention, featuring self-penned tunes and unique arrangements pushing their ground-breaking project beyond their virtuosic string playing. Drummers Ursula Russell (Snapped Ankles, Alabaster DePlume) and Simon Roth (Chris Potter, Alice Zawadzki, Adrian Dunbar) feature on the record on full kit and Ukrainian Poik (marching drum) respectively, and Francesca and Flora experiment with bowed cymbals, extended piano techniques, and samples of found sounds.The album was recorded in three different locations - Total Refreshment Centre (London), Big Jelly Studios (Ramsgate) and Great North Sound Society (Maine, USA).

The music of Fran & Flora sits in two camps, both steeped in tradition, with material drawn directly from archival recordings, recovered manuscripts and years of study with traditional music masters, whilst simultaneously garnering a contemporary and avant-garde aesthetic, speaking to the more classical and experimental listener. Fran & Flora inject their source material with drones, loops, free improvisation and electronics to create a ‘border-defying’ (Mojo) sound. Their influences range across a wide spectrum of artists and composers from Silver Mt.Zion to Rhiannon Giddens, Lankum, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Colin Stetson, Adrienne Lenker, Shabaka Hutchings and Mica Levi.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nudity
2. Romanian Fantasies II
3. New Beginnings
4. Fishelekh Gefinen - To Catch A Fish
5. Nign
6. Dobriden-Hamanul
7. Kick Up In 9
8. Feygele - Little Bird
9. Flowers For Innocence
10. Yikhes - Lineage (Donia IV)
11. Hold Me Close
12. Sholem Aleichem 

Following his debut album and two EPs, Hidden Notes Records are proud to announce the release of Josh Semans’ sophomore full-length album; To Will A Space Into Being.

Released on September 15th 2023, the album comprises ondes Martenot, Juno 6, and a string quartet, represented visually by manipulated AI imagery.

Since his last outing on Hidden Notes Records, Josh has shared the stage with Charles Hazlewood and Portishead’s Adrian Utley, performing improvised drone works inspired by the writings of Hildegaard Von Bingen. Josh has also been enlisted as pianist and synth-player in Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres’ latest performances at The Barbican and Bristol’s St. George’s Hall.

Back in the studio, Josh has recorded for the likes of Volker Bertelmann (Hauschka) and Alex Baranowski, produced a bounty of reworks for artists such as Garreth Broke, Larkhall and Simeon Walker, and worked in collaboration with Spitfire Audio in the creation of the LABS Ondes Musicales virtual instrument.

For his latest project, Josh has created a world that is entirely his own; combining the retro-futuristic sound of the vintage Juno 6 synthesiser; the classically-coded string quartet; and the otherworldly ondes Martenot - one of the earliest electronic instruments, born in the trenches of the First World War.

Inspired by the ethics and intentions of brutalist architecture, ‘To Will A Space Into Being’ expresses a reverence for its raw materials, the space they occupy, and the world they create.

Buildings like the New Street Signal Box in Birmingham, The Barbican in London, and the pumping station on Rotherham’s Marsh Street make no attempt to hide their means of construction. ‘To Will A Space Into Being’ channels a similar honesty of materials. The hiss and warble of old tape machines remind the listener of poured concrete taking on the texture of the wooden boards used as moulds for walls; interlocking floors and elevations are represented in repeating, polymetric string arrangements.

Josh was led to ideas of retro-futurism; visions of the future from decades ago. The now 40-year-old Juno 6 is at one point on this timeline, centuries ahead of the instruments of the string quartet. Then, the ondes Martenot navigates the years of space between them - oscillating between past and future effortlessly.

Reminiscent of the soundtrack sensibilities of Vangelis and John Carpenter, the outsider explorations of Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire, and the organic synth stylings of Jon Hopkins and Rival Consoles, the electronics of To Will A Space Into Being are adorned with cinematic string arrangements and ethereal ondes Martenot lines. Suspended textural interludes are woven between bigger, bolder setpieces.

The artwork for this album has been created by Miriam Bean as part of her ‘These Places Do Not Exist’ project. Working collaboratively with artificial intelligence, she carefully prompts imagery into existence to then be curated and manipulated using a variety of digital and manual techniques. Almost 300 versions of the album artwork were made, and carefully examined before a selection was made. Adam Hinks’ (graphic designer and Hidden Notes co-founder) graphical contributions to the vinyl packaging utilise similar techniques; digital text made physical, distorted by hand on the way back into the computer.