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Sober Hedonist

by Martin Messent

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Hatchling 03:03
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Lacuna 06:30
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Magic Hour 04:57
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about

This album reflects (in fingerpicked, open tuning guitar form), my life, interests and obsessions: acoustic guitars, depression, recovery, paradox, wonder, vegetarianism, improvisation, land justice, cosmology, surrealism, and the natural world.

Two weeks before the pandemic hit in 2020, I moved from a city to a village. After a couple of years I was served with a section 21 notice and had to move again. This time I went as far away as I could get from A roads and the commuter belt (in Sussex that isn't very far, but you can hide out for a while) without moving to Scotland.

These tunes were written in between fishing and walking and sleeping and eating, like my previous album. I wanted to make this one all solo acoustic guitar, because I had finally found the right instrument, a 12th fret 000 Larrivee, customised and lovingly setup by the very brilliant Lewesian luthier, Cameron Mobbs, whom I trust implicitly with any stringed instrument I give him.

Living alone in the sticks, playing solo guitar every night can test your sanity when it's all there is, so I started to share the tunes with other musicians I'd met in the area, one of whom, Ed, recorded some mandolin on a couple of tracks. And I can't resist fiddling with synthesisers, so the arrangements grew a bit.

I ended up recording nearly all of my guitar at Mark's studio in Brighton, (so I could get away occasionally from the social vacuum of my rural idyll, and get a decent coffee), and a lovely job he did too. He also sampled some of it and made it go all stretchy and gooey with his granular synth setup, and this forms the basis of the last track on the album.

credits

released July 7, 2023

Martin Messent - acoustic guitars, dulcimer, chimes, synthesiser
Mark Treffel - keyboards, granular synthesis and sampling
Ed Barrett - mandolin

Recorded at Round The Corner, Brighton
Mixed and mastered at home by me

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Martin Messent England, UK

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