Family history eh? The things you can’t change are your family or your relatives. In the case of Burmese/Scots sound artist Fiona Soe Paing, that it tums out is good thing, at least on her mother’s side, as it means she’s related to Aberdeenshire trad singer John Strachan, whose very presence has inspired this album – a reset of his song “Bonny Udny”, is present – a meshing together of vocals, electronics, ballads and found sounds. In a period when many artists seem to be peering into the darker side of folk song then “Sand, Silt, Flint,” makes perfect sense, the title reflecting another of Soe Paing’s influences, the landscape, the pure physicality of north east Scotland.
The product of what she calls “splurging” where random ideas are recorded en mass onto a laptop and then worked up, added to, refined later when crafting these roughs into a form which will sit acceptably and appropriately alongside source material of choice. Birthed chiefly through Covid, most of the musician’s parts were added elsewhere and then mixed into space. A writer as well, Fiona’s taken local legend and come up with tracks like “Maggie Machlin,” which blend in without you being aware that this is an original, in this case about pregnancy outside wedlock. It links to a stretch of sand near Red Well. (There’s a location map for all the tracks on the inside of the album cover.)
It’s in that precise attention to detail and how the individual elements fit together that further attraction lies, Fiona Soe Paing creates with a unque vision. After all she did start an all female punk band when quite young and then dived into the avant garde with alacrity so this was never going to be a straight forward album.
It is however fascinating and challenging. Some of the tracks may be familiar to those with record collections beyond thirty years of age, “Auchindoun,” was covered by Hedgehog Pie on “The Green Lady,” here it’s a spooky vocal with rubbery bass lines, droning and crushing synth rhythms, “Bessie Bell” sung back in the early 70s by Martin Carthy and Maddy Prior is a chorus of vocals which really does sound arcane, lonely and ultimately fatal, the story of Bess and Mary Gray doesn’t have a happy ending. The reflective “Forglen’s Plantains,” where the effects are held back and the folk instrumentation shines through on a bucolic finale makes a different, fitting close out.
One for the curious amongst you then. It’ll take a while to wear in but the discovery is half the pleasure.
Simon Jones.
