These tracks are short samples - 'tasters' if you like - from our forthcoming debut album Auld Springs New, which is due to be released in summer 2024. 

The album started out as a lockdown project in Spring 2020, when our more pressing endeavour of a full cottage renovation ground to a halt, and our world suddenly got a lot smaller. Most of the material was recorded amidst the rubble of a half built house! The music includes arrangements of older repertoire from various Scottish and Border traditions, alongside newer compositions and melodies from further afield, which perhaps reflect our experiences of and affinity with music from mainland Europe, the Mediterranean and eastwards. 

‘Spring’ is a word with many meanings, one of which is a ‘dance tune’. There is an old Scottish saying that ‘auld springs gie nae price’, which meant that old tunes were worthless. To us, of course, they are priceless (though we do hope you will buy the CD). Spring is also a time of new growth, of potential energy, of birdsong; a time of martins and swallows returning from their winter migrations and bringing with them the sounds of far away places. A spring is a source of water, fresh from the earth, yet age old and well travelled, nourishing and nurturing as it once again winds its journey back to the sea.

‘Auld Springs New’ is deliberately ambiguous in its meaning. It perhaps conveys a sense of time and its recurring cycles - the inevitable rhythm of the seasons, of how the past experiences of our culture and of our individual selves can send ripples of influence into the future. Music is simultaneously both auld and new, impalpable, ever being created afresh as it slips from beneath our fingers. Perhaps the phrase hints at the idea of our music as a single thread woven into the traditions of our folk culture which continue to be ‘borne on the carrying stream’, as Hamish Henderson so eloquently phrased it.

The Orange Blossom - sample

Miss Taylor's Delight - sample

Vas-Y Mimile (Marc Perrone) - sample

Tide Time - sample

Morag and Lewis play a rich repertoire of acoustic instrumental music from Scottish traditions along with many others. Their shared intuition and love of spontaneity allows them to freely move between melody, harmony and improvisation.

Morag Brown and Lewis Powell-Reid

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