The living mountain

"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".

"[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".

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"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".

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