jon thorne

Quietly reflective, evocatively stirring and majestic, words struggle to perfectly do justice to ‘Homestead’, the latest work by Jon Thorne. Released as a strictly limited edition lathe 7 inch pressed up by the folk at 345rpm. and accompanied by a fuller album’s worth of meekly murmured portraits on an included CD pressed up in an edition of 100 by the esteemed Static Caravan sound house. ‘Homestead’ is a gathering of fourteen short aural snaps, a return, or as the accompanying press release notes ‘a reconnection with self’. Sorrowfully stirred in melancholia, two things strike you immediately when sitting through your initial listening, firstly it’s sense of loneliness, maybe detachment or perhaps rather more, isolationism that tearfully courses throughout these dozen or more suites, that’s not to say there’s no beauty, beauty fear not is in abundance, best heard in fact on the trembling and intricately weaved lush love note that is ‘Morton Manor’ . Secondly, and perhaps more of importance, its sensitivity, its awareness of its surroundings and the touching bond its forges with the landscape. Its here that Thorne excels, for ‘Homestead’ is a musical journal mapping memories, feelings, weather conditions and experiences, its remoteness sweetly garnished by the tailored turn of neo classical flurries crushed in a bitter sweet solemn sigh perfectly exemplified on both ‘breathing’ and ‘autumnal light’, the former delicately sprayed in lovelorn pastoral phrasings with the latter measured by the mournful counternance of regret. Elsewhere there’s the sultry night light overtures of ‘sea and solitude’ breathing both familiarity and a deep sense of cosiness to the palette pursued at haste by the intimately genuflecting opines of ‘I’ll be here when you wake’. ‘really’ with its sea sprays, field recordings of his children and the slow string arcs together craft an eerie nostalgic ghost light glow to the proceedings. That said, from ‘Achiles heel’ onwards, ‘homestead’ takes on a warmer persona, the earlier cuts assumed with a haunted characterisation, now seemingly freed of the past are seduced in a lightness that crystalises within both ‘past forgetting’ and ‘the art of letting go’ the latter particularly allured by the appearance of hymnal visitations. ‘homestead’ is a very personal yet hitherto deeply beguiling collection softly stirred by the contrasting range of the emotional spectrum.