“Hints of the late '90s 'Bristol sound', a hypnotic rhythm section and an almost pastoral feel” Complex
“Absolutely gorgeous” Tom Ravenscroft, BBC6 Music
“Beautiful music” Dan Snaith, Caribou
“Unfolds like a shimmering stone skipping across a lake. Gorgeous” XLR8R
“These guys just get better with every release” Gilles Peterson, BBC6 Music
“Fantastic stuff from Bristol” Thristian, WorldWide FM
“An incredibly exciting project” BBC Introducing
“Super tunes!” Antal, Rush Hour Records
“Celestial” The Vinyl Factory
“Approaches jazz in a forward-thinking manner, seamlessly incorporating electronics and resamples” Music Is My Sanctuary
Pete Cunningham
‘Severn Songs 2’ follows media praise, radio airplay and DJ support for ‘Severn Songs 1’ from the likes of Dan Snaith (Caribou), Gilles Peterson, Tom Ravenscroft, The Vinyl Factory and XLR8R. Prior to that, 2017 saw Ishmael Ensemble’s first EP ‘Songs for Knotty’ released on Banoffee Pies, followed by a remix of Carl Craig’s ‘The Melody’.
The ‘Severn Songs’ series marks the most full-bodied and ambitious project yet from Pete Cunningham, who prior to evolving into this varying collective of musicians recorded and released solo, as simply Ishmael. Promising beginnings under that initial guise saw releases on Wolf Music, West Friends and Church, alongside contemporaries Seb Wildblood, Medlar and Frits Wentink.
‘Severn Songs 2’ sees Cunningham slip into a nostalgic haze, throwing back to his formative years in Bristol’s late noughties scene, but cast through a prism of jazzwise electronica; surely the furthest apple of influence to fall from the Hessle-Hotflush tree.
‘Tunnels’ begins with a flurry of drums before being enveloped by sub-bass pressure, like stepping directly into a basement club in full flow. As the track climaxes, saxophones sweep the air like green-spoked lasers overhead, creating a contrast of pinpoint clarity against the background atmosphere. Though sonically well outside Bristol’s dubstep legacy, it accurately portrays the smudged perception of a peak time rave.
On the flip, we find the more introverted 'First Light', wherein the group downshift from the buzz of a bustling room to the hum of one’s head as dawn breaks. It’s a moment of spacious solitude shared only, as Cunningham pictures it, with “swans fighting over polystyrene chip boxes” in the canal below.
Never one to miss a beat in either sense of the phrase, Cunningham has once again littered canny references to compliment the reverential music. The sleeve art captures birds through an obscured lens, nodding to the river Avon and overall milieu that inspired ‘First Light’; and for native Bristolians especially, the A-side will evoke a fertile period, full of vital music, communal escapism, and the maze of basements and tunnels where it blossomed.
Overall, Pete’s ability to thread this thematic needle gives a descriptive tenor to the group’s wordless sound, elevating the music at once to something more personal and more resonant – and leaving soon-to-be-answered questions about where ‘Severn Songs’ will flow to next.
