A cold north wind on a misty isle. Winter's frozen streams and deep dark lochs...
Mariners. A time for tales of seductive sirens who roam the deep, luring men into the sea...
The next musical album journey, an atmospheric concept album possessing an electric-tinged soundscape that will transport you to an icy, wintry, and deep-sea land/soundscape.
A cold north wind; frosts, fogs, the wild waters of the north sea, where such folkloric beasties and creatures such as the kelpie, selkie, and mermaid lurk...
Ancient tales, sailors, shipping forecasts of gale warnings, fogs and haar, sea foam and seaweed, northern isles, lighthouses, nebulous skies, dark waves and deep fathoms...
15-track album of original rock-tinged songs and instrumentals, with full-colour, 20 page booklet of specially created paintings and hand-lettered lyrics.
North Sea songs:
1. North
Sea
2. Sea Haar *
3. This Cold North Wind
4. Tempest *
5. Haunting
6. Selkie
7. Gloaming *
8. Past Evening Black Lochs
9. Frozen Streams
10. Mariner
11. Kelpie's Loch
12. Rig *
13. The Waves Grow High
14. Maidens of the Deep
15. Storm Warning *
*instrumental
At Kelpie's Loch...an old tale
The Kelpie, whose image and legend turns up in this album, is, in Scottish folklore, a creature that inhabited lochs, a water horse that could change into a charming man, and who would occasionally emerge from the water and bewitch and capture some poor maiden, carrying her off to the deep waters, never to be seen again... Fierce beasties they were! Not real, of course...
Fantastic and staggering review of 'North Sea'!
"Having followed Lori Hartbarger's work for a few years now, and having enjoyed immensely her glorious 2009 album Glasven, I was looking forward with great anticipation and expectation, to the release of her latest album-North Sea. I am happy to report that North Sea has more than lived up to the already high expectations I had of it. What has always shone through in Lori's work is that the songs are absolutely sincere and heartfelt, which seems an all too rare quality these days, and this happily continues right throughout North Sea.
The songs themselves are some of the most wonderfully crafted, atmospheric songs you could wish to hear, with Lori's beautiful singing deftly weaving a delicate tapestry above the ever shifting musical delights of her gorgeous flute, guitar and synth playing. It is truly impressive how she manages to effortlessly and skilfully meld her beautiful voice and such mesmerising flute playing (like some mermaidian siren song) betwixt the flowing guitars and silkily evolving synths.
It would be a pointless exercise to single out tracks and/or musical highlights as there are just too many on this album to list. It is one of those rare releases where you will more than likely repeatedly want to listen to the album in it's splendid entirety, from beginning to end it is an absolute joy. North Sea is simply one of my favourite albums of recent times." S. Stannard 2011
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