Introducing... Kevin Fowley - “À Feu Doux” out 26th July via Basin Rock
Kevin Fowley
À Feu Doux
Released 26th July on Basin Rock
Watch the self directed video for ‘Ne Pleure Pas Jeannette’:
Growing up, Kevin Fowley split his time between living in France and Ireland. He listened to French lullabies sung by his mother in one room, while his father would be playing Donegal tunes on the fiddle in another. “I’m lucky to have been brought up bilingual and bicultural,” he says. “What I find interesting is that I usually think in English, but if I intentionally start thinking in French, a markedly different side of my personality comes through, encouraging different thought patterns.”
And this is apparent on his beautiful record of French lullabies À Feu Doux, which encompasses musical elements from both worlds, as it seamlessly glides across folk, jazz, and a rich yet shimmering in between sound that feels reflective of a man who has soaked up such a rich yet varied collection of musical influences since day one.
Unvarnished and exposed is a feeling that floats through À Feu Doux like a gentle gust of wind creeping in through the open window at night. The music is deeply intimate and tender, with Fowley’s delicate yet resonant voice feeling like a loving whisper in the ear. If this feels like being in the room with someone as they play quietly in the corner, it’s largely because it was structured that way: most of what you hear on the record was performed in an attic in Dublin, with additional mixing by Brendan Jenkinson (John Francis Flynn, Aoife Nessa Frances). “Having the time and the space to record at home helped capture the atmosphere I was looking for,” Fowley says. “I wanted to keep in the room noise, the chair and floorboard creaks. It gives a sense of time and place. Real night time music”.
From the opening ‘Ne Pleure Pas Jeannette’, about a young woman who wants to marry a man who is imprisoned and faces being hanged, it sets the tone for the release that contains all the dreamy, late night hypnotic associations with lullaby music. It’s a very adult record for something so rooted in childhood songs. “You can imagine in the 15th and 16th centuries when the songs were written that parents would sing them to frighten their children into obedience,” says Fowley.
Pre-order:
https://www.basinrock.co.uk/records/kevin-fowly-a-feu-doux
https://kevinfowley.bandcamp.com/album/feu-doux
