Left-field ambient rock band LYR announce their new musical project, 'Firm As A Rock We Stand', out on 27th May. To celebrate the announcement, the band release the first single from the project, 'Addison Drifts', out on 11 May.
Comprised of singer Richard Walters, producer Patrick J Pearson and fronted by poet Simon Armitage, LYR have partnered with Durham Brass Festival and Easington Colliery Band and will debut the stunning collection of songs live in Durham Cathedral on Friday 15th July as part of the Durham Brass Festival.
The result of a co-commission with the Brass Festival and the Durham Miners’ Association, the music that the critically acclaimed three piece have created, alongside brass arrangements by award winning brass composer Simon Dobson, was inspired by the incredible story of Durham’s 'Category D' villages.
In 1951, the local authorities decided that out of 357 towns and villages in County Durham, 121 which they’d deemed did not have an economically viable future should be starved of any further public funding. What followed was a decades-long battle that saw villages labelled as slums, some entire neighbourhoods wiped from the map, and bitter battles that still cast a shadow today. When the history of 'Category D' was mentioned, Simon says it was an immediate Eureka moment.
“I hadn’t heard of it before but as soon as I was told the story I knew that was what I wanted to write about. It feels very live and very hot, it appeals to people’s sense of unfairness. I was born and grew up in a village, I still live in one now, so it spoke to me very strongly. I’m super conscious of my identity in relation to where I’m from. Not only does my writing reflect that, I think I make a lot of my decisions in life by looking over my shoulder and thinking about where I came from so the idea that that place would no longer exist – or has been deemed to be hopeless and without a future – I could imagine being upsetting and bewildering. It spoke to me.”
What followed was a long process of research, with Armitage visiting the Durham Miners' Association which gave him an insight into both the broader history of the area and introduced him to the villages themselves. “I was able to speak to people who lived in Category D villages, which was absolutely vital. I heard lots of different stories as you’d expect but lots talked about the way that since they were categorised as Category D their village had struggled to escape that identity.”
The music features excerpts of recordings they made as local people showed them their villages, including a particularly moving moment where a woman from Grange Villa tells them “it’s worse now than what it was when it was Category D”. Two key places he visited, which have each inspired a song, were Marsden and Addison. Both sites were completely demolished.
LYR recorded the songs with Yorkshire’s Marsden Silver Band but will be performing with the Easington Colliery Band at the Cathedral. They hope many of the people they met from Category D villages will join them for a gig they talk about with an element of awe. While Simon Armitage has had an illustrious career, his work revered and his collaborators ranging from rock royalty to real royalty, there’s no doubt that he regards this entire project as genuinely special.
"Every single thing about it ticks a box for me. There’s something here about the working classes, about the North, brass bands were a huge part of where I grew up . It’s an incredible honour for us to be performing this new work at Durham Cathedral. It’s an enormous privilege to be playing in that space and also a big responsibility to take on the issues and themes that are very real for some people. We are talking about people’s lives and we want to do a great job of representing them properly."
Following the success of their debut album ‘Call In The Crash Team’, LYR return in full force with this new music, shifting gears sonically with more up-tempo instrumentals and slick production. What is truly impressive is Simon’s evocative lyricism and Richard’s soaring vocal delivery, which often combine to create moments of exquisite sadness or passionate hope. The passion displayed by the entire band is undeniable, and this new music is set to strike a chord while listening solo or in a live setting with the walls of Durham Cathedral towering overhead.
About LYR
Comprised of singer Richard Walters, producer Patrick J. Pearson and poet Simon Armitage, LYR are the perfect combination of poetic spoken passages, soaring vocal melodies and imaginative, cinematic production. They are a progressive voice in the world of spoken word, thanks to Armitage’s compelling lyrics, as well as Pearson’s seductive bricolage of musical styles and Walters’ evocative vocals
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