Following the release of The Spirit Moving EP in 2020, Nomadic music duo, Samana’s latest single All In One Breath appears on their new EP, Melancholy Heat.
Combining Rebecca Rose Harris’s dulcet vocals and Franklin Mockett’s gently haunting piano the pair, based in a remote region of Wales, have created lo-fi psychedelia infused with pop, All One Breath was named by Elbow frontman Guy Garvey as his ‘Artist Of The Year’ on his BBC 6Music show.
Self-produced, self-recorded and self-mixed whilst holed-up in a remote part of France, All One Breath is “a rumination of our interrelations with nature, and the impressions we carve on the world which surrounds us. Wisdom has been exchanged for naivety, which took the guise of intelligence, but the solution is buried within the ancestral part of each and every one of us”.
Andy Howells sets out to discover Samana’s Music DNA.
What was the first song that made an impact on you?
Rebecca: I’d probably have to say a song by Fela Kuti in collaboration with Tony Allen. My mum played me mostly African music when I was in the womb. As early as I can remember my parents use to put on these amazing energetic percussive compositions really loud for me and my brother in the living room and we would dance uncontrollably around the room in socks. Without a doubt this rhythmic music has defiantly woven itself into the core of my being.
Franklin: Kraftwerk – Computer World. I remember being 3 or 4 and repeatedly climbing up the cd rack to get my hands on the luminous green album which filled my world with so much mystery and wonder. That childish magic I experienced with every play of the album computer world, buried itself deep within me, and I still find I’ve access to it whenever I give the record a spin. This is what is so intoxicating about music; it’s ability to transport your emotions through a journeying into the past.
What was the first single you bought?
We always bought albums
What was the first album you owned?
Franklin: Stone Roses – Turns Into Stone
Rebecca: On vinyl – Fairport Convention Leige and Leif. My mother gave me her copy which she had purchased when she was a teen. It had a preserved scorpion pressed between the sleeve from her travels in the outback of Australia.
What’s your constant go to track?
Franklin: David Crosby – Traction In The Rain
Rebecca: Karen Dalton – Something’s On Your Mind
What’s your constant go to album?
Franklin: Campfire Headphase by Boards Of Canada
Rebecca: Ted Lucas – Self Titled Album
Who’s your latest music discovery?
We’ve been discovering a lot of incredible soul, jazz and afro-beat music, both new and old. I’d say one of our favourite recent discoveries has to be ‘Antibalas’ – an incredible Afrobeat band from Brooklyn.
What’s your own track that best defines you as an artist?
This is a hard question to answer because as an artist, I believe that the music that extends from you is a conversation with your soul and subconscious at that given moment, crystallising that emotion – that period of time. For that given reason, my answer would always be different. I would say at present, it would have to be: The Glory Of Love from our recent EP ‘The Spirit Moving‘.
The song is a mantra, stripping away the veneer of everything in life that distracts and overwhelms; to realign the soul with the importance of what it is to be rooted. This song marks the value of connection, returning one to the fundamental principle that lies at the heart of all things – the profundity of what it is to truly love, and to be loved. It was a improvisational piece that formed in the French mountains during the first period of lockdown.