Bhume (meaning Earth) - is a collaboration between Lauren Wilce + Alison Sudol. These initial songs were recorded in 7 days over 7 months out of a shared desire to create music that could comfort young children and parents alike… a sonic blanket of safety to settle and send both into dreaming. The first seeds of the Bhume recordings were sown in the earliest days of Alison’s pregnancy with her second child. Days later, Lauren flew to Australia with her three children. There, she and her partner are working with indigenous elders to help purchase sacred land for the preservation of cultural healing knowledge. The friends reunited in the studio when Alison was heavy with baby, Lauren’s brief return planned as close to baby’s due date as possible.

Produced with the gentle touch of Chris Hyson and accompanied by Alex Haines’ sensitive guitar, the music- lullabies and dreamscapes, are designed to soothe little ones and help them sleep, although they’ve discovered along the way that they also calm the anxious minds of adults, with or without children around. 

The songs are steeped in the wisdom of the several traditions of ceremonial healing and indigenous medicine songs that Lauren has been trained in over more than twenty years across the world. Initiated into rare custodial knowledge ordinarily inaccessible to outsiders - particularly women’s wisdom- Lauren weaves this deeply-rooted understanding of song medicine into the music. 

Bhume follows Alison’s latest solo record, Still Come the Night, an album that stemmed from the loss of her first pregnancy, which happened not long after she met Lauren. It was that loss that brought the two women closer, as Lauren- pregnant with her third child at the time- helped guide Alison through the ancient ritual of grief and, later, into preparations for mothering once more. Their friendship, grown into sisterhood through the birth of three babies between them, is the foundation of Bhume. It is a sweet celebration of the epic journey of motherhood,  unconditional love, and an ever-deepening gratitude for the miracle that is bringing a child into this world.

Love and the natural world, above and around us, are woven into the fabric of these songs - stars, sea, animal, forest, flower, rain. They are spacious enough to hold both the joy and the pain of motherhood. These are turbulent times, times that are beckoning us to grow beyond what we know, sometimes beyond what we feel we have the capacity for. Mother medicine is needed more than ever- medicine not only from mothers but also for them. The music is intended as a journey, not to be listened while operating heavy machinery… lie down, take a deep breath, press play and let these medicine lullabies walk you along the river, home.

bhume