Coming from a place of depression writing and creating in the depths of the pit and reflecting on it in recovery. It's brutally honest and uses words and music written during my lowest period.

"I woke up and it was different. I'd been here before, why again? I thought I'd banished you. You sucked me down to open me up once more. Face yourself, face your world, reflect, learn. Now you are ready'

It's a combination of sung, spoken voices and developed electronic sounds. Violence and extreme in sound and stillness. Created in Victoria's music studio over a couple of months.

Out of the depression this time I found such a place of calm.These spells are rare, but I felt this one has been extremely helpful and allowed for a joyful creative period since.

Sleeve Notes
Album Title: Garrotted Light
Music by: Victoria Bourne
Victoria Bourne -  Vocals, Korg Kross Workstation.

Produced, mixed and mastered by Victoria Bourne
The artwork by Victoria Bourne

1. Break The Spell
2. Ether
3. Garrotted
4. Nothing

Garrotted Light

Garrotted

Ether

Break the Spell

‘So wonderful to hear the beautiful boiling of percussion and this very folk like melody moved and twisted and distorted into this landscape of trees and meadows and hill.’ Corey Mwamba BBC Radio 3

“This richly atmospheric, haunting and melancholic album…achingly beautiful harmonies” Andy Hamilton The Wire Magazine

Victoria and Walt are both involved in The United Isolation Ensemble, which was created as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown. It was due to working in this that we realised that a duo collaboration was going to be a rich creative possibility.

Melodies inspired by traditional English Folk Songs floating above the pointillistic abstraction creating a richly atmospheric, melancholic, brooding and beautiful sound. Living in a twisted folk landscape. The threads of percussion, voice and electronics weave together, at times blending, but sometimes colliding, creating a kaleidoscopic , often haunting soundscape.

Victoria’s vocals used multiple harmonies blending with the sounds created by Walt. She thought of the twisted landscape we’ve all been living in since the first lockdowns. Finding inspiration from traditional English Folk Songs and giving them an unsettling feeling. Adding final texture with created sound in the Korg Kross. She also produced, mixed and mastered the album.

Walt’s percussion on this album uses conventional instruments and also a range of more unconventional instrumentation that is home-made.
The former consists of drums, singing bowls, shakers, woodblocks etc.
The latter are made up of the following – A large, beaten steel sheet, suspended by springs; some lengths of taut piano wire with contact microphones; an instrument with fret saw blades, wire brushes, springs, broken music boxes, and other found objects. These are amplified, but without any additional electronics.

Sleeve Notes
Album Title: Songs From A Cloud Chamber
Music by: Victoria Bourne and Walt Shaw
Victoria Bourne - Vocals, Korg Kross Workstation.
Walt Shaw – Kit, hand percussion, gongs, home-made instruments

Produced, mixed and mastered by Victoria Bourne
The artwork by Victoria Bourne with a painting, 'Peak Walk' by Walt Shaw.

1.Raven’s Kit
2. Shakespring Maid On The Shore
3. Heaven’s Kitchen
4. Ye Mariners All
5. Sorely Failed Honey
6. Suspended By Strings
7. Tension Zeitgeist

www.victoriabourne.com
www.waltshaw.co.uk  

Ravens Kit

1. Raven's Kit

Songs From A Cloud Chamber

7. Tension Zeitgeist

Shakespring Maiden on a string

2. Shakespring Maid on the Shore

3. Heaven's Kitchen

4. Ye Mariners All

5. Sorely Failed Honey

6. Suspended By Strings

I am a composer, performer, educator and and recording artist whose work encompasses folk, roots, and electronic music. I have a MA in Music from the University of Bristol. 

My music has been featured on BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4. 
I have toured extensively with Husky Tones whose music was play-listed on BBC Radio 2. 

I have released 3 of my own albums to date, 4 albums with Chris Harper as Husky Tones and Hangover Square and have also recorded 23 albums with the international collective United Isolation Ensemble. 

I regularly work with the Midlands based collective Quadelectronic. 

I founded and was the musical director of the Bristol Hippodrome Choir for 8 years, conducting concerts with Russell Watson, Sam Bailey and for BBC in Bristol.

In 2021 my critically acclaimed album twisted folk album ‘Songs from the Cloud Chamber’ was released by Discus music record label and played on BBC Radio 3. I composed and produced the album, performing with Walt Shaw percussionist.
 
Achingly beautiful harmonies’  The Wire Magazine

‘So wonderful to hear the beautiful boiling percussion and this very folk melody moved, twisted and distorted into this landscape of trees meadows and hill’  Corey Mwamba BBC Radio Three

In 2021 Hangover Square folk roots band was created during lockdown, a collaboration with Chris Harper releasing the album ‘Painting With An Open Heart’ It is a truly collaborative folk-rock project by two isolated people thinking way bigger than their one-bedroom basement flat, sounding at times like a 40 piece ensemble. ‘Painting with an Open Heart’ is an expansive, lushly arranged mini-epic giving voice to the ghosts of a life lost’.

‘Painting With An Open Heart is like a balm for the soul. Bourne shows what an excellent singer she is’  Zero Magazine

‘Victoria’s voice has a classical purity and laser clarity creating poetic structures that have only to be felt to be understood’  RnR Magazine

My other current solo project is called 'Stories from the Nightingale Valley' an album of a new collection of contemporary folk songs based on stories told by women living in St Anne’s and Brislington in Bristol. For release in late 2022.