Name: Tree
Brand: John Metcalfe

Tax rate EU

Default:19

Supplier EU

Redeye

Total Cap

Format detail

Colour details

Discogs ID

Limited edition

Colour

Format Music EU

Extended format

Extended format: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Download code

Download code: No

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Release date

2023-09-22

Format multiplier

Catalogue number

39155571

UPC / Barcode

884108013106

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

39155572

884108014899

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

John Metcalfe

Label EU

Pias

Genre EU

Alternative / Modern

Newest Listed Items

John Metcalfe’s new album, eight immersive compositions that take the listener through twenty-four hours in the life of one of nature’s most majestic creations. Tree is released via Real World Records. The Durutti Column viola-playing master - a composer and arranger for the likes of U2, Coldplay, Peter Gabriel and Blur, as well as co-founder with Tony Wilson of the Factory Classical label – had been composing music spontaneously, instinctively, when the idea of Tree arrived. The album came from a desire in John Metcalfe to write at scale – perhaps a natural reaction for a composer writing out of the silences and solitude of our recent pandemic years. “The pieces I was writing were big and trying to be bigger, so I knew they had to be to do with something – and then I thought about one of the most profound experiences of my life.” He is referring to seeing Tāne Mahuta as an adult, the largest known living kauri tree in the world. Set in an ancient subtropical rainforest on the North Island of Aoreatoa / New Zealand, John had spent his early childhood living in that part of the world after his British father had "escaped there as a ten-pound Pom". Tree imagines what it would be like to be sat completely still under a tree that you love, being alive to the ever-shifting interplay of light, colour, weather and sound. Shimmering pulsating layered tracks take the listener on a voyage that takes in the dawn chorus, depicted by conversations between chirruping woodwind and staccato strings, through to the solemnity of dusk and into the playful night. The album at times summons up the folkloric power of ancient forests through an emotional crescendo in emotion and sound, before bringing us back to sunrise, and a reflection on the journey we’ve taken.

Tree

Music EU