Earnslaw Burn
I made another album, and in between all my other writing things, I’m doing a bit of an introduction to each album track. The introductions cover the ideas, processes and inspirations behind the music, as well as addressing vital questions such as ‘what film would you be watching if this was the soundtrack?’. Each track also has an accompanying photograph of the actual mountain, which adds a further perspective to the music.
This piece is about the sixth and final track from the album, Earnslaw Burn.
Returning
Home seems to be a big theme in my music. My last album finished with a piece called ‘We’re Going Home’. And this piece is - sort of - about going home as well.
The real Earnslaw Burn is a kind of valley thing that takes you up between the peaks of Mount Earnslaw; the crater bit in the middle. It’s a walking track that people usually do to go and see the glacier. But in this case we’re going in the opposite direction. It’s our way down off the mountain, returning below the treeline to green things. Moss, bushes, soil, and human scale landscapes which don’t intimidate or threaten or ignore.
The home here is a place of comfort, safety, and warmth. We have been out on our big adventure, and now we’re going home. Musically, the mountain is still with us; you will recognise the main theme again, this time in a different form on a solo violin. But you will also hear some dense strings which represent the mossy woods, and the piano returning to represent water, this time in the form of a gentle river. This is intended to be a contrast to the stark unforgiving cold of the mountain itself.
Perhaps what makes a place truly home isn't just its comfort, but the way it receives us when we return changed by our adventures. The mountain doesn't care whether we climb it or not - it will remain magnificently indifferent either way. But home absorbs our stories, holds our transformations. When we return from the heights, we bring something of them with us, and home makes space for this new version of ourselves.
This is what I'm trying to capture in the album's final moments. The violin theme that represented the mountain's austere beauty is now supported by warm string harmonies, a memory rather than the real thing. The piano's ostinati suggest not just water, but the way our stories flow into the deeper currents of who we are. We return home different than we left, and home embraces both who we were and who we've become.
The place we call home
The central musical influence here is Vaughan-Williams' The Lark Ascending - not just in the solo violin writing, but in its fundamental expression of place and belonging. Like Vaughan-Williams capturing the essence of the English countryside, I'm attempting to distill that moment when a landscape stops being scenery and becomes home. The violin carries this emotional weight, dancing between obvious musical quotation and something more personal, much like my own relationship with these two places I call home.
If you don’t know The Lark Ascending, it is some of the most English music ever written. It is an intensely green, pastoral, lush, bucolic work, and immediately makes me feel as though there is a place in the world where I belong.
I need to explain this sentiment further because it’s very awkward for me. On the one hand, I feel strongly that my home, the place where I belong, is where my beautiful long-suffering partner lives, and the house and life we have built together. I come from England, but I live in Wellington, New Zealand, and when people in Wellington ask me about ‘going home’, I usually reply that I live just up the hill. My grandparents, who were Irish, used to talk about going home when they were heading back to Ireland from London, where they lived. That was fine for them, but for me, I feel it is disrespectful to the people of New Zealand to continue to refer to England as ‘home’. People have welcomed me into this country and encouraged me to build a life here. I’m not going to keep talking about England as the place I really belong. I belong here.
But, nonetheless, I feel as though I have a place. Maybe the place I come from, rather than the place I am going to. I do come from England, and sometimes I miss being there. But the England I miss doesn’t exist. It’s not the country of brexit, real housewives, or Bet365. It’s the country of John Donne, Thomas Tallis, Alan Turing, Alan Garner and A.E. Houseman. Steve McQueen (the director rather than the actor), Peter Greenaway, excellent beer, gothic cathedrals, chain libraries, Saxon barrows, and beautiful green countryside.
This place, Earnslaw Burn, the safe place we return to after confronting the unfeeling reality of the mountain, is my home. It isn’t somewhere you can go away from and return to; it’s somewhere you carry around with you. That’s why it can simultaneously exist out in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand, and in an imaginary England that I’m pretty sure never existed in the first place. It’s here, somewhere in the middle of me. I’m trying to welcome you to that place with this music.
Open your heart. I’m coming home.
Coda: the film soundtrack question
My advice to anybody listening to new or unfamiliar music is that a good way into it is to imagine what kind of movie you’d be watching if this was the soundtrack.
I also find it fascinating to understand how other people hear my music, which is often very different to what I intended when I wrote it. I was extremely lucky that Nathan, a friend of mine, sent me his picks in answer to the movie question. He said I could share them here, so here they are.
My pick - The Dig, a film all about Sutton Hoo, which is the single most English and most magical place I have ever been.
Nathan’s pick - (Nathan gave the same comment on the last two tracks, so this is a repeat from last time round, which I’m repeating because he said nice things about my music) “The last two tracks made me think of the end credits of a film. Very soothing. Sounds like a less depressing version of my memory of Johnny Greenwood’s soundtrack to Norwegian Wood. So, in your film I guess not everyone died horribly, or they died for a good reason and beautifully."
LSP verdict - I hate to name and shame, but LSP hasn’t actually got around to listening to this track yet. For shame.
And that’s us for this track! And also the album, which is now officially concluded. Thanks for reading.
But fear not (or fear a lot, depending on your preferences), because I have a new project in the offing. I have lots of changes planned, and I’m really excited about it. You’ll hear from me soon. And you know the best way to make sure you hear from me? That’s right! Hit subscribe!
In the mean time, if you want to revisit the album, it’s available in these places -
Bandcamp (where you can also make a small donation to the cause if you like)
It’s also on Qobuz, Deezer, Tidal, and about a trillion other streaming services if you use one of those.