Site of the Week 12/19-25/11: December Well

For those who don't like Christmas songs and want to get into the season in a different manner, there's a remedy!  Listening to winter-themed songs, like I often do, is the best way to get into the holiday and seasonal spirit.  It's the one way I don't absolutely hate winter when I can listen to music with bells, xylophones, and other instruments with eerie, dark, hollow, and mute sounds.  Former Malinky fiddler Mike Vass has been quite busy with solo projects (as well as being up to no good).  His current project: December Well.  Read on for more about the project.

Vass has created a vlog for fans to follow the day-by-day production process with videos and song demos on sound cloud.  In it, we find out what instruments he uses and the sounds in nature he uses to recreate the seasonal atmosphere.  The effect: a truly natural experience, as the fiddle, guitar, melodica, and other instruments fuse with the sounds of sleet on the window and trees moving in the winter wind.  The experimental music is defined by unique and specific uses of instruments.  The result of these daily ideas, contests, and songwriting sessions is the album December Well, to be released in January or February (not December, I know, but it's recorded in December). Below find the first vlog.




On a side note: I haven't confirmed it with Mike yet, but it seems he and Malinky member Fiona have been teaming up to create an album of traditional Scottish folk music.  I've been dying to hear because I've been missing their performances together at folk pubs around Scotland.  And on another side note: I haven't heard word of when Malinky will reunite with more new music.  As I'm sure you know, this is still devastating to me.  Find Fiona's a capella performance of "Young Emslie" (which I've mentioned quite frequently) below.