“Music is everywhere. Countless radio stations pump it out 24/7. It sells cars, shampoo, drinks – even political parties. Music is always there to cover up a lull in the conversation; it soothes us on take-off and on landing, and it makes us feel good… or does it? Subconsciously we crave for something that goes much deeper: well-crafted, inspiring music with real emotional meaning.
Thankfully, each new generation is blessed with a few young people who embrace music as an art form. They explore, invent, discuss, rehearse, and live their music. What they create enriches and entertains the audience without patronising it.
The artists in the F-ire Collective will give you depth, inspiration, surprise, and above all, hope.”
Jamie Doe and Fred Thomas have been making music together since they were 11 years old.
The Magic Lantern is the musical moniker of British Australian singer-songwriter and composer Jamie Doe, an artist dedicated to examining the limitless depth of human experience in our search for meaning.
To Everything A Seasonis his unashamedly emotional fifth album written in the months following his daughters birth and his fathers death six weeks later. Describing their brief meeting in a dementia nursing home Jamie says:
“In that cathartic moment I saw myself in my father, and my daughter in me and I felt joy and grief in overlapping waves, beautiful and complicated, which continue to ripple outward. These songs are my attempt to make sense of this incredible time where both ends of the circle of life touched.”
To Everything A Seasoncrackles with the quiet intensity of a family’s rawest and most intimate moments. Recorded live over over four days at the legendary La Buissonne studio in France by Gérard de Haro, the sound of To Everything A Seasoncaptures a vivid emotional immediacy, the richness of the ensemble arrangements and spirited improvisation belying the devastating songwriting. Working with a septet drawn from London’s thriving jazz scene To Everything A Season is both dreamy and direct, making use of the space around Jamie’s arresting voice to emphasis it’s emotional weight.
Lyrically, To Everything A Seasonis The Magic Lantern’s most powerful and accomplished achievement, a mature work that establishes Doe as one of the most confident lyricists writing today. With themes of loops and cycles threaded through the album, the lyric draws on references as diverse as the Bible, the records of John Coltrane and the helix structure of DNA.
Born in Australia, before moving to the UK at 12, Jamie adopted the stage name of The Magic Lantern and began writing songs while studying philosophy in Bristol. He lives in London and has released four full length albums and two EPs in addition to a compilation of other artists versions of his songs for the male suicide prevention charity CALM. He has toured the UK, Europe and Australia with acts as diverse as folk singer This is The Kit, Sam Lee, and Alabaster Deplume. He is a Professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and teaches on the songwriting faculty at the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance.
The Magic Lantern has received praise from numerous publications including The Guardian, Songlines, Acoustic Magazine and Folk Radio UK as well as BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stephens, BBC 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne, Guy Garvey, Tom Robinson, BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction , Night Tracks and BBC Radio 2’s Jamie Cullum, Mark Radcliffe and Bob Harris among others.
To Everything A Seasonis out via Hectic Eclectic / La Buissonne Records
Fred Thomas’ album ‘The Beguilers’ weaves crafted song-writing into the narratives of poems by William Blake, Emily Brontë, William Shakespeare, James Joyce, Walter Savage Landor and Thomas Carew. Drawing on a wonderfully strange repository of musical influences – English folk, Joao Gilberto, Minimalism, the Aka Pigmies, The Beatles, and the English Madrigal School – Fred Thomas’ settings delicately bring the poets’ images and metaphors to life with finely wrought harmonies and luscious melodies. ‘The Beguilers’ features vocals from Ellie Rusbridge and instrumental contributions from Dave Shulman, Liam Byrne, and Malte Hage.
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