Music: Firefly Burning

Mixing it up with a new album and a chat with Jeff Hemmings

Although recorded over a six month period from November 2012, in an arcadian manor house near Lewes, Firefly Burning’s second album, ‘Skeleton Hill’, has only just seen the light of day. But the wait seems to have been worth it; the reviews have been great for this complex, vocally-driven, eclectic, progressive folk, pop and contemporary classical album. A work that saw Talk Talk’s Tim Friese-Green in the production chair for the first time for 13 years. “That happened by chance,” says the band’s singer Bea Hankey. “We were supporting North Sea Radio Orchestra at St. Giles’ in London. Tim had gone to see them, but afterwards he came up to us for chat. He seemed really into it, and keen to work with us. He has such an amazing musical mind and musical spirit. It was beyond exciting!”

Certainly, even in this interesting musical age where styles, sounds and genres are being mashed together in new and original ways, Firefly Burning still stick out as an unusual band, even though Bea sees the band as ‘alternative-indie.’ Not only do the payers come from a free improvisational background, they mix up folk, with Steve Reich minimalism, Cafe Penguin Orchestra repetition, Bkorkesque eccentricity and outstanding vocals, from Bea and the band.

“I fell into classical singing when I was a teenager and early 20s. I then went to study music at university, studying bits of Mozart. But I got to 21 and started wondering what am I going to do with this now. I began to want to explore other things, like jazz and contemporary music, and ended up with Firefly Burning which has been amazing, because there are no boundaries or barriers with the band, stylistically. It’s very free, for my voice too. So, it felt like a perfect fit.”

Lyrically, contributions come from the past and present, including the 13th century Persian poet Rumi, whose words are set to a couple of tracks. “The lyrics always come first, because the music is taking the idea or the atmosphere from the words. They are all (the lyricists) connected to us, except the ones who are long dead! Skeleton Hill (the title track itself) is a poem by Tim Ross, which felt like the heart of the album. It’s bare and skeletal like. It’s about the earth, the air, being in wood open spaces, it felt like the emotional heart of the album.”
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