firl

firl

About firl

“We liked the sound of it. It feels evocative of nature, bringing to mind the unfurling of ferns in spring, and of fir trees. FIRL is the yin to life’s yang.” Here’s a good one: the first thing you think when you listen to a song by FIRL is, what a beautiful thing this is, and then, once your mind has been found wandering all by itself, why can’t all music be like this? So delicately nuanced as to be reminiscent of artists like Michael Nyman or Ryuichi Sakamoto – though only in the way those artists seem to treat melody as an instrument in itself – FIRL’s debut release, Wildwood – essentially a record about a kinship with nature - is a natural phenomenon, incorporating memories of the temperate rainforests of Wales (Eos’s homeland) to Japan and the deep-rooted connection with nature that we all share. It is a mellifluous brittle affair so finely poised and positioned as to be able to claim land rights of its own. Put simply, it’s enough to make you weak. FIRL – are Eos Counsell (violin, programming) and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello, piano/keyboards), two Honours degree-wielding Music graduates - from the Royal College of Music and London’s Trinity College, respectively – who bumped into each other at the tail end of the ‘90s and realised they wanted to make a difference. Both outsiders of sorts – being classicists at an early age tends to do that to you - Eos is from Cardiff, the daughter of a music teacher and a father who worked for the NHS, whilst Gay-Yee is from Yorkshire and of Chinese heritage. They immediately felt a bond. “My dad was in the Airforce,” says Gay-Yee, “and although he met my mum in Hong Kong, I was brought up in Hull where there didn’t seem to be anyone other than me with any kind of ethnicity other than Yorkshire! But I had this music teacher who gave me the opportunity to play the cello, and I managed to get a scholarship to have lessons in London all through my teens.” For her part, Eos remembers her older sister playing the violin and music being very much part of her upbringing. “I had orchestra and band rehearsals after school,” she says now, “and I learnt to play the violin, the trombone and the piano, commuting to London’s Royal College of Music every Saturday from the age of nine onwards.” “It feels like we have emerged from a really glamorous washing machine.” Of course, there’s an elephant in the room and her name is BOND since both Eos and Gay-Yee were founding members of that ground-breaking fourpiece, the first truly globally successful classical crossover group, and, perhaps more notably, the most successful string quartet – five million albums and counting – of all time. In 2000, Born, the band’s debut album, easily hit the number one spot in the UK classical charts, and was immediately banned for not being classical enough! “It started this huge debate about what constituted classical music,” says Eos, “which was a good thing”, whilst Gay-Yee acknowledges that “we weren’t that surprised. We’d written songs with pop producers and with that market in mind but we didn’t actually ever call ourselves classical. We set out to be popular.” Indeed, they performed in Times Square, rang the final bell at the NY stock exchange, sold out Sydney opera house, had sumo wrestlers at their Japan shows, and were featured in both the Tokyo and London Olympics. Correspondingly, the band’s very existence prompted US Billboard to set up a crossover-classical chart, presumably as a counter-balance to purist classical consumers becoming too emotionally fraught at the very idea of four classically-trained musicians messing with the status quo. Which begs the question: did no one learn anything from Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965? Or from jazz entering ‘the modern age’ in that very same decade? "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." Steve Reich. Naturally, ‘twas ever thus, although one thing that strikes you when you meet FIRL is that they know exactly what they are talking about. Words like timeless, simplicity, rhythm and minimalism – Gay-Yee wrote her dissertation on that very same subject – pepper the conversation like confetti at an experimental composer’s wedding, yet a FIRL record has none of the coldness associated with such ephemeral frivolities. Eos cites Benjamin Britten, Vaughan Williams, Steve Reich, Paul McCartney and Bjork as musical heroes/influences, before Gay-Yee interjects that her first ever gig featured UK Subs, but both Firlsters – we seem to be getting the hang of this familiarity lark - maintain they “are constantly inspired by the beauty, mystery and wonder of the natural world, and the many diverse cultures we have encountered on our travels”, a philosophy surely explored on their debut album, Wildwood, a collection of cinematic, nature-inspired compositions for cello, violin, piano and birdsong. “The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things” – Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass. Wildwood kicks off with Summer Rain - “a musical representation of clouds and tension building before the joyous release of a thunderous downpour”. Forest Prayer and New Beginnings are as about as onomatopoeic as it gets before Awakening – about a bear coming out and seeing the world – heralds the arrival of Spring, and Golden – an interlude of sorts – sees in Little Bird. Subsequently, First Flight – a violin improvisation by Eos over a drone – is a prelude to, yet almost a part of, Migration, since it documents a bird’s first flight to its epic journey over thousands of miles, the latter movement heralding the arrival of Breathe, a piece inspired by forest bathing. “Piano is the foundation for most of our music” reveals Eos, and certainly this is the case on Woodland Creature - a stunning Sakamoto-esque movement – and the extraordinarily-beautiful and rhythmic Lake Kussharo, which is the album’s centrepiece if not its coda. Lake Kussharo is a volcanic crater lake in Akan National Park, eastern Hokkaido – oft referred to as Japan’s Loch Ness after numerous reported sightings of a lake monster – and the song itself is presumably inspired by the duo’s countless tours and promo-trips to Japan. “We have always felt a real connection to the place” says Gay-Yee now, and that country’s influence is surely writ-large on Tokyo Summer, the album’s superbly-evocative closer. “It’s all about seeking pleasure, moments to lose yourself in.” So why should we listen? Well, herein lies the truth of the matter since Eos is currently featured violinist with Nitin Sawhney and her film and TV soundtrack work includes Sherlock, Good Omens, Dr Who, Harry Potter, Mission Impossible, Black Widow and Spiderman although she has also recorded with Paul McCartney, Nick Cave, The Divine Comedy, The XX, Paloma Faith, The Cocteau Twins, Julian Cope, Badly Drawn Boy, Tinie Tempah, Little Simz, Robbie Williams and Stevie Wonder. Before Bond Gay-Yee has previously worked with Primal Scream, the Spice Girls, Lulu, The Lightning Seeds, Sting, Bryan Adams and Barry Manilow and appears on soundtracks to movies including The Fast and Furious and Into The Spiderverse, a truly prolific composer, arranger and producer, recently contributing songs to Rehab The Musical, a show (starring Keith Allen and Mica Paris) that premiered in the West End in January 2024. Naturally, such credentia doesn’t tell you the half of it, as FIRL are about to unfurl – ha! – one of the most beautiful records you will hear this year. Wildwood is due for release in June 2025. © Jane Savidge, August 2024.

Taken from Last.fm

93 listeners  ·  2,748 plays via Last.fm