Musik / folk

The living mountain


Anmeldelser (4)


Northern Sky

d. 3. nov. 2020

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Allan Wilkinson

d. 3. nov. 2020

"Listening to Jenny Sturgeon's new record is a little like embarking upon a ramble through the Cairngorms. The music Jenny creates lends itself to this sort of exploration, a journey through the senses, where time appears to stand still ... The closer to ambient folk music we get, the more we find musicians returning to the natural world in search of inspiration and Jenny does this well ... It's not just the gentle compositions that makes this such a sensuous experience, nor is it the sparse arrangements and the tender touch of the keyboard, it's also the use of a multitude of sound effects that offer a flavour of the natural world, as birdsong weaves between the selections, which is never cloying or invasive, but adds to the experience ... The Living Mountain takes us away momentarily from these uncertain times and helps us breathe in cleaner air".


Folk radio UK

d. 1. okt. 2020

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Thomas Blake

d. 1. okt. 2020

"[Nan Shepherd's book] The Living Mountain (...) is now regarded as almost a sacred text in the broad genre of nature writing, a book that effortlessly combined ecology, philosophy and poetry while never straying from its own distinctive and beautiful wilderness ... The latest album by Scottish singer Jenny Sturgeon (...) seeks to reflect and interact with the Cairngorms in the same way that Shepherd's book did, and Sturgeon has gone to extraordinarily detailed and loving lengths to make sure it succeeds ... She anchors herself to the mountains, almost literally, by underpinning the entire album with a continuous field recording made in the Cairngorms ... [With her] stunning, snow-encrusted and sun-dappled songs, [Sturgeon] has created a work of rare beauty".


The Scotsman

d. 7. okt. 2020

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Jim Gilchrist

d. 7. okt. 2020

"The cover art of Sturgeon's tribute shows the distant Cairngorm massif strung across the horizon like a blue mirage, and there is a glowing, weightless quality to some of these songs that has them similarly hanging in the air, accompanied by Sturgeon's chiming guitar, dulcimer and piano and by empathetic accompanists including violist Mairi Campbell and cellist Su-a Lee ... Sturgeon's delivery, lyrics and environmentalism (she has a PhD in seabird ecology) bring to mind fellow singer-songwriter Karine Polwart, whom she greatly admires".


Songlines

2020 December

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Rob Adams

2020 December

"Jenny Sturgeon is quite the renaissance woman. The Aberdeenshire-based singer-songwriter has a PhD in seabird ecology and as well as performing in Scottish folk group Salt House and the audio-visual project Northern Flyway, she organises the Shetland Songwriting Festival and runs her own cottage industry, Ink & Wool. For this, her second full-length solo album, she has created a song cycle exploring her personal connection to the Cairngorms mountain range and drawing on the work of the late nature writer Nan Shepherd ... Sturgeon sings in a gentle, sleepy voice, clearly enunciating her sometimes percussive, sometimes alliterative lyrics over variously fingerpicked guitar patterns and plangent piano accompaniments, carefully augmented by strings, harmonium, whistle, synth and field recordings".