New Release – The Wood Wide Web (album) by Ian Roland
Ian Roland, based near Brighton (UK), is a singer-songwriter who writes original roots music, full of heart-strung orchestration and up-close, life-drenched lyrics.
“I play live as a solo act and as a duo, with violinist and arranger-composer, Simon Yapp. I have supported acts such as Martin Simpson, The Black Feathers, Stick In The Wheel, TV Smith, Robb Johnson, Boo Hewerdine and Robert Vincent.“
Ian Roland is releasing his album ‘The Wood Wide Web’ on 24th February. The album was recorded and mixed in the Subtown Studios, Brighton (UK).
“Research has shown that beneath every forest and wood there is a complex underground web of roots, fungi and bacteria helping to connect trees and plants to one another. This subterranean social network, nearly 500 million years old, has become known as the ‘wood wide web’.”
“‘The Wood Wide Web’ is a new album of eleven songs I have written during the last two and a bit years. I have arranged and produced the songs with violinist and gigging partner, Simon Yapp. This album project started in Spring 2020, following the release of the album, ‘Double Rainbow’, subsequently published by production music company, Indiesonics.”
“The album has experienced various waves of the Covid pandemic and rollout of vaccines; three UK Conservative Prime Ministers; an ongoing cost-of-living crisis; an ongoing War in Europe; the climate crisis deepening as governments around the world fail to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Conceived and developed against this backdrop, the album highlights the power of nature to rejuvenate, sustain and enrich all life, including our own, if only we gave it the chance to do so.”
“The track ‘Can’t Lose Anymore’ was written after visiting the Eden Project in Cornwall in England and learning how trees and plants communicate via a mycorrhizal fungal network of interconnections. A recommended read on this topic is Merlin Sheldrake’s ‘Entangled Life’.”
“During the first lockdown, due to the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020, my children and I decided to plant an area of wildflowers in our garden. Science was linking the pandemic with the years of exploitation and destruction of the natural world* and to try to combat our sense of the overwhelming helplessness of this situation we planted wildflowers and over the coming months watched the bees and butterflies visit. This is inspired the track ‘Wildflowers’.
“We are mastering/re-mastering audio for three videos for the following tracks with the help of our cinematographer friend, Josh (JR Lewis Films): ‘Gold In The Dust’ – to be released soon, ‘Nothing Could Grow There’ (audio to be re-mastered pending album release) and ‘Beyond Words’ (audio to be re-mastered pending album release).
