C Exile by Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer

Exile is departure, separation and loss. Exile is enforced, chosen or the outcome of strange circumstance. Exile is painfully physical, coldly political and deeply personal. Exile is the shadow of war, the grip of despair, the emptiness of grieving arms. Exile is a heavy wind that crashes through cultures, tears at relationships and rips apart the soul. Exile is the impossible abyss, the deadly trail and the churning hungry ocean. Exile is the overwhelming pull towards home, yearning for familiar people, longing for ancestral lands. Exile is crossing mountains into loneliness, walking dusty roads amidst confusion, wandering lost inside a world of death. Exile is a song
of mourning, a dance of remembrance and a promise of return. Exile is a brave cry that echoes through generations and a faithful flame that feeds the tribal hearth. Exile is the search for a beloved, for completion, for peace. Exile is a root deepened by loyalty, a spirit grown stronger through adversity, determination honed by belief in a just & balanced future. Exile is eyes widened by vast horizons and hope kindled by the smallest possibilities. We will find a road to take us home. Ancient spirits watch for our return.

This album constitutes one of our longest recording projects to date, incubating and changing shape over two years before eventually emerging in its final form. During this time travels in unfamiliar lands, meetings with new people and intense experiences previously unknown to us, all contributed to the shifting dimensions of what exile means and how it might be expressed in these songs. And to truly comprehend in some small measure the devastation of those exiled from the piece of earth that is home, by land clearances and conflict, by poverty and powerlessness, in Tibet and Africa, the Middle East and within our own countries, in past centuries and during present chaos, we kept returning to the nearest point on the horizon: how would it feel to us to be compelled to leave these wild hills to which we have committed our hearts and promised our bones?

Here are songs that dance and songs that mourn. Here are songs that cause us to be glad for the very soil that lies beneath our feet.

Tracks include: Exile, The Red Coats, After the Battle, Bring on the Storm, Amber Road, Protecting Veil, Dreams Restored, People of Home, Nightlands and Heathen Day.

Album length approx 70 minutes. On CD compact disc

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