Music / Albums
Alt-folk album delivers mellow sunshine listen
Songwriter and producer Tamu Massif combines electronic, hip hop and ambient production styles with field recordings on his new offering Really Summer Long which is inspired by Bristol summers.
The mini-album, out on Tuesday, is in turns heart-wrenchingly nostalgic and hazily smile-inducing.
It’s mellow sweetness, with layered vocals in harmony against a backdrop of cicadas, swallows, waves and summer rain provide the perfect sunny-day soundtrack.
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The Bristol-based artist loves “the energy when the weather improves and people’s moods lift,” he said. “But the album is also about the bittersweet feeling that summer has to end and the rest of the year, when we find ourselves longing for summer.”
First single Believe Me features Waldo’s Gift drummer James Vine.
“It’s about the process of reconnecting with what’s important while reminiscing on hazy days spent in the sun, watching planes fly overhead with the sound of the waves crashing next to you,” Massif said of the song.
Album closer Long is one of three instrumentals on the record, and is an improvised acoustic performance recorded outside on a hazy summer solstice.
Working outside in nature has become part of Massif’s regular practice, and one that has fed into this album in particular. He described his intention with the record as to “encapsulate the fleeting beauty and vibrant energy of summer through distinct and evocative soundscapes.”
The album has been released on Chiverin records, a label founded in 2014 at the Louisiana that specialises in ‘eclectic, psychedelic, freak folk & alt-pop with rural sensibilities.’ A follow-up is already in the works.
Main photo: Tamu Massif
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