Cove Hithe
Album: Your Ground Is My Earth
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.cove-hithe.co.uk

Named after a hamlet in the area of Suffolk from where they hail, Cove Hithe are a duo that let their music do the talking, information about them on their website as sparse as the nature of their stripped back to the bone folk.

Cove Hithe, the hamlet, is famed for the ruins of its large East Anglian style church, St. Andrews seeing as you asked, and it's battle with the sea, a battle that it lost by some five hundred yards and continues to do so, all of which is very nice, but what does that have to do with the band, well look at the title of the album and you might find a clue or two.

Cove Hithe are a duo, or at least that's the impression the website gives, but descriptions of them as a three and four piece exist, that seem to be very much influenced by life and events around them, not just by the people, but places and the landscape from which those people and events arise. Consequently there is a beautiful sense of space in Cove Hithe's work and some beautiful contradictions that desolate landscapes and music can conjure, that sense of being at one with a place and at the same time, feeling you don't belong.

Across the nine tracks of "Your Ground Is My Earth" you get the feeling that this is an album of constant change, one that's not going to be quite the same when you come back to it and that even though you've heard the tracks before they seem to evolve every time you come to them fresh. There are hints of a less busy Gravenhurst in the sound, particularly in the instrumental, "Slow Life" and bizarrely I kept hearing a very slowed down August List as well.

"Your Ground Is My Earth" probably won't be to everyone's taste, though if you are into to soundscapes, both in their own right and as parts of songs, this is definitely an album for you. The instrumentation is exceptional, as are the arrangements and with the exception of one cover, "How Wild The Wind Blows", penned by Nick Drake's mum, all the tracks on the album are original and original is definitely a term that could be laid across the album.

Personally, I don't think it's an album for every day, it's not one for Sunday best either, but if you want to lose yourself for half an hour or let your mind go off into the distance to spend some time by its self, then I can see Cove Hithe and "Your Ground Is My Earth", being very much a part of that, but it's also so much more, the songs/tunes seem to have something else to give, on their own, when you take them from the album and play them in their own space. An enigmatic and enlightening album, well worth checking out.

Neil King