Toby Hay & Aidan Thorne, Newport Memorial Hall, Sunday May 4th
Toby Hay has ploughed a singular path with a lightness of touch across a number of instrumental records, grounded in a focus on the natural world, deeply framed by his Welsh heritage and the landscape where he has lived all his life. He operates his own cottage works record label, Cambrian Records, & has also released a collaborative guitar record with Jim Ghedi on Topic.
Aidan Thorne is a versatile double bass player who explores the intersections of traditional music, jazz & classical Indian fusion with a highly developed sensitivity. His bowing earthly drones & warm, considered finger work has brought a weighted musical expanse across many projects.
In 2021, Toby & Aidan headed to the studio to make an album of new music, the inspiration being the things they missed most due to the restrictions of the pandemic. They focused on improvisation and the timbre of acoustic instruments, catching the heightened charge of musical conversation in live performance.
After a pause is imbued with the pandemic silence though it is much more than that; the record concerns reflections on place, memory & a peopled landscape. It is as if Aidan’s resonant double bass aches with the history of creaking doors in an old home, dances across wooden floorboards and shifts with the colour and light of changing seasons. A drifting, spacious, yet intimate and familiar landscape with shimmering open tuned grace & the finger plucked ring of Toby’s arpeggios & glissando guitar strings.
‘Toby Hay’s mid-Wales cottage industry…reaches its highest peak yet with After a Pause.’ Jude Rogers, The Guardian
‘beautiful music: that gathering of feelings that go by the untranslatable Welsh word hiraeth…the world’s dew gleams on this music, but the world’s dust swirls through it too.’ Robert Macfarlane
Toby Hay & Aidan Thorne, Newport Memorial Hall, Sunday May 4th
Toby Hay has ploughed a singular path with a lightness of touch across a number of instrumental records, grounded in a focus on the natural world, deeply framed by his Welsh heritage and the landscape where he has lived all his life. He operates his own cottage works record label, Cambrian Records, & has also released a collaborative guitar record with Jim Ghedi on Topic.
Aidan Thorne is a versatile double bass player who explores the intersections of traditional music, jazz & classical Indian fusion with a highly developed sensitivity. His bowing earthly drones & warm, considered finger work has brought a weighted musical expanse across many projects.
In 2021, Toby & Aidan headed to the studio to make an album of new music, the inspiration being the things they missed most due to the restrictions of the pandemic. They focused on improvisation and the timbre of acoustic instruments, catching the heightened charge of musical conversation in live performance.
After a pause is imbued with the pandemic silence though it is much more than that; the record concerns reflections on place, memory & a peopled landscape. It is as if Aidan’s resonant double bass aches with the history of creaking doors in an old home, dances across wooden floorboards and shifts with the colour and light of changing seasons. A drifting, spacious, yet intimate and familiar landscape with shimmering open tuned grace & the finger plucked ring of Toby’s arpeggios & glissando guitar strings.
‘Toby Hay’s mid-Wales cottage industry…reaches its highest peak yet with After a Pause.’ Jude Rogers, The Guardian
‘beautiful music: that gathering of feelings that go by the untranslatable Welsh word hiraeth…the world’s dew gleams on this music, but the world’s dust swirls through it too.’ Robert Macfarlane