Ross Whyte releases the beautiful and moving album, Provenance.
I woke up in the back of my campervan, bleary-eyed, and still very tired after playing 2 gigs the night before, and I thought about going back to sleep for a while but ended up doomscrolling for an hour. I’m feeling exhausted after pushing sound from my body, knowing that my weekend of work is far from over. As I walk towards the city centre, I press play.
I didn’t read the bio for Provenance or Ross Whyte before listening to this album. I remembered it said something about folk, but this album is so much more. I don’t know how much my current headspace impacted my feelings towards this album, but it found me in a moment and made me feel…everything.
It starts so ominously with the roar of thunder and then falling away into light rain before the first piano key is struck. Struck? That doesn’t feel right. Not yet. It was gentle and whimsical and lifted me a few centimetres off the pavement, allowing me to float to my destination, softening the thud of my Samba’s on the concrete. I suppose I should tell you what it is, but I just want to talk about how it made me feel. I mentioned folk earlier, and it’s sort of dipped in folk but not in a “heidrum ho” way, it’s more about flavours and accents. Like, if you moved to Australia and had children out there, people would forever ask if they were Scottish because little inflections in their speech would give them away.
It’s primarily an instrumental album with some guest vocalists, and there are elements of folk with classical and jazz influences decorated so beautifully with electronic and natural sounds. The album incorporates some of my favourite magic tricks in music; ear candy, suspense, surprise, and music hidden between silence.
When it started, I thought, “Great, this is going to be like King Creosote, I’m going to love this,” but the first vocal to appear was more classical than indie-folksy. I think King Creosote is a good place to start if you’re trying to picture it without listening (although, I’m not sure why you’d do that), then add some Nils Frahm and some of the gentler post-rock bands like This Will Destroy You or Hammock. I’m sorry, this has become super nerdy, so I hope it’s still accessible. I found it beautiful and moving.
This album is perfect for a walk in the woods or lying contemplatively in a dark room. It’s meditative and immersive with sounds that wash out what ails you. I suspect every listener will feel something entirely different, tailored to their very needs, like a Rorschach test for the ears.
