Hallett and Ashby met in 2017 during a field recording residency located on the Mmabolela Reserve in Limpopo, South Africa, and quickly discovered a shared interest in improvised performance, field recording, and electronic manipulation of sound to enliven a listening experience through a connection with its place of performance. As time passed, a curiosity grew towards composing works that would explore the intersection of each player’s style on their principle instrument, clarinet and guitar respectively. With a hemisphere’s worth of distance between them, Hallett and Ashby began trading tracks via the internet to produce what would become The shore sang of ghosts.
The shore sang of ghosts is a collection of pieces focused on the transients of memory as it drifts from present to recollection. With the movement of time, older events mingle amongst a continually updated catalogue of new experience, each imparting a new perspective of previous relevance and understanding. Combined with the folklore of Mmabel’s origin, Hallett and Ashby took this idea of memory drift and remembrance of space as inspiration for the pieces that make up The shore sang of ghosts.

Image credit: Jutta Pryor