20-year-old indie-folk, singer-songwriter Rachel Sermanni, dressed in boho-chic, is awkward and endearing all at the same time. She hails from Carrbridge on the north east of the Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands. The population of her home town is just 708 people (enough for a small Indian wedding). You’d assume coming from a small town in Scotland that she might be relatively ill-prepared to take on an international music career but she seems undaunted.
Her recent visit to India saw her collaborating with percussionist Bickram Ghosh and folk-singer Papon in the supergroup Troikala. They began their project at Christmas time last year to put together an album fusing all their musical sensibilities. She also played three gigs in the country, two in New Delhi and Kolkata as part of Troikala and one solo performance in Mumbai for Live from the Console at Mehboob Studios.
We caught up with her two days before she was leaving the country and she told us about her latest EP Black Currents, her new album out in 2012, Troikala, and Vashti Bunyan.
The cover of the Black Currents EP
Can you tell us about your new EP?
It’s coming out on the thirty-first of January. I don’t know when it’s coming out in India but I know it’s coming out in Britain. Well, it’ll be online.
It’s called Black Currents but it sort of has different meanings. It’s four tracks. One of the songs is called ‘Black Currents’, and it was more insinuating to a dark river. I had this idea of a very dark river, but I also like the idea of blackcurrants, like you pick blackcurrants off the bushes. So it’s like four-picked treats for the EP. So that was the idea and no one else is going to get that from just Black Currents. I like that. (Check out ‘Breathe Easy’ from her new EP, Black Currents, below.)
Breathe Easy taken from Rachel’s debut EP Black Currents out on 30th Jan 2012 by Rachel Sermanni
The art work is very surreal, sort of abstract, strange stuff on the cover by Sophie Milner, who lives in London. Music was done in a place called Ardgour, which is a recording studio in the middle of nowhere. You cross on a ferry from Fort William, which is a town in Scotland, and then you drive, and this house is just set in the middle of these huge mountains all around and nothing else… The sea, the sea loch is beside us, and then we’ve got Ben Nevis, which is the biggest mountain in Britain, is close by. So it is a beautiful setting and we recorded there. And we, is a whole bunch of musician friends – three fiddle players, a double bassist, two percussionists, a pianist (Jennifer Austin, pictured below), who is out with me just now (in India), and a guitarist.
Rachel Sermanni and Jennifer Austin, striking a pose
So how was the collaboration with Bickram Ghosh and Papon in Troikala?
It is astounding how much progress we’ve done in this time. We met Bickram and Papon the day we were meant to start collaborating and we had never met before. I had spoken to them once on the phone and that was a disaster. Just because there was three of us on the phone; no, four of us on the phone because Taz was also on as well. I couldn’t decipher who-was-who firstly, and then it was kind of difficult understanding the Indian accent and I am sure they were having the exact same problem with mine, and please say, if you are having a problem with my accent.
We arrived on the twenty-fifth of December in Kolkata. My mother was probably a little bit sad about it, but I wasn’t going to miss it. It’s kind of nice to get away from everything that is western, and that culture, and all the commercialism. It was lovely to be out and it’s so surreal to arrive and be just really warm. And it’s been just an incredible experience and it’s such a strange time to be away from everything.
So Bickram and Papon, we met them on the twenty-sixth. We recorded that day, three songs. We literally just wrote them. So by the end of the third day in the studio, which was all the days that we had, we’d templated about eight songs, which is amazing. This is so rare to happen. We actually have to properly record them now. We only bring basic recordings, and it really is basic ideas. We had enough for an hour-long gig in Kolkata by the third day of having only just met them. And I think that is really weird, and odd, and good. Otherwise we would have disappointed a couple of people that had been trying to get it up.
Sermmani at her Live From The Console gig @ Mehboob Studios
So what does Troikala sound like?
Well, firstly I feel like making sure that Troikala… is sort of representing three people. And it really is more than that, because Jen (Jennifer Austin) is involved with it hugely, and her piano skills have come in a great deal. She’s helped compose all the pieces. And then Bumpy (Mainak Nag Chowdhury), the bassist, joined us and he is a wonderful character and provided the ground for us and really structured all the songs and stuff. They are like the invisible aspect of the team and together they created a really cool sound.
It might evoke traditional aspects of all our backgrounds, but I feel like, as an independent musician my music is not traditional at all. The songs I write are not traditional folk songs, like my own compositions, so I guess they could be deemed contemporary folk. There is a merging of loads of influences rather than me singing Scots sort of stuff…. So there are elements of that. Jen was, and is primarily a traditional musician as well, and she plays with me and has an amazing style which is again, not in that category of traditional, it’s almost jazzy – all our music, all our chords.
Everyone is really stretched out to all that we know in these sort of collaborations because it’s just like whatever feels right, we play.
Sermanni looking a little dreamy
What is your favourite song from Troikala?
There is this one that Jen came up with, that was the third day or second day, that we’ve called ‘Kaleidoscope’. And it’s probably the most trippy of them all. It’s in a really cool rhythm, or two really cool rhythms. It’s in five/four to begin with, which is a little hard to hold on to. And then it goes on to nine/eight, which is another strange thing, but it’s a tabla player’s dream. It’s so sort of out there and it evokes, every time we were driving through Kolkata, all the colours and smells and everything was just hitting you. And that’s what I always imagined when I’m listening to that song. So when we sing it, I hardly put any words in it this time. It’s just like singing and really feeling it, and it really in the mind.
Then I like the one that I began back home in December time called ‘What Is Waiting’. I wrote the lyrics and the melody to it, and my own chords and I took it to them, and then they brought in the Hindi music to it. And we’ve collaborated and that’s a really fun one to sing to.
Rachel Sermanni trying to do up her hair
You have toured and worked with Mumford & Sons, can you elaborate?
I met them at a festival in Scotland, where we ended up playing on the beach just having a jam. After that, the pianist Ben (Lovett of Mumford & Sons), who’s part producer and who has a few hats on his head, he asked if I wanted to go down (to London. #twss), and this was just after I left school and so really provided me with that pivotal moment where I was like, ‘Wow I really might be able to do this. I might be able to have a job and do something like this.’
He produced a song that I never really sing anymore but allowed me to realize that I could make much louder sounds than I was making previously. It’s called ‘My Friend Fire’ and it’s like, oh gosh, so it starts off really quiet and I feel like my voice is, definitely my voice is gotten tinged since then. I was much younger. (Sermanni starts sings the song to us. Listen to ‘My Friend Fire’ below.)
Rachel Sermanni My Friend Fire by Wide Days
They had this really amazing drummer in and I got to really strum the guitar. It was the first ever song that I had, that I really was sort of shouting in it. Well, not shouting but being noisy. So it provided me with the scope to realize, I could do anything I really wanted to. I almost felt like when I was a little bit younger, that there was only one path that was to follow the twee guitar singer-songwriter and so it was a really great moment to realize that that didn’t have to be the case and you just needed to have a little bit of guts and balls to get on with it. And then they (Mumford & Sons) went off to India. But they have always kept me in their mind when they were doing the Highland tour of Scotland, they asked if I would support them. But I’ve not seen them in a long time.
Sermanni at Cafe Mondegar, Mumbai
Do you have any other plans in India?
We’re going to try and get some Indian instruments. Well close to Bickram’s house we found a wee shop that does handmade harmoniums. They were incredible. We probably won’t buy one of them because they are probably going to be expensive. We’re going to check out the harmoniums and we’re going to check out these cool, I forgot what their called, they just have one string, and it’s like…
M: it has a bowl with two sticks that come out
N (photographer): Ektara
RS: Hiktha
N: Ekthara, it’s a Baul instrument from Bengal.
RS: Well, we like that one, because we used that in the first song. A wee one, we were like, ‘woing, woing, waaooing’, for one of the recordings. So we thought, ‘That is cool and that would work,’ and just want to have a good explore, just as musicians. It’s nice to find a cool sound and I’ll be recording the minute we get home. I’ll be recording my album which hopefully will come out sometime later in the year so we go straight into that recording studio that I was telling you about in the middle of nowhere. (Check out her video for ‘Song for a Fox’ done by SenSu Film.)
What is the name of your new album?
Oh, I have no idea. I’ve got a good amount of songs, that I’ve accumulated since I was 15. There is a good range and so you can wait and see. I hope it works out. (Check out her song ‘The Fog’ which she performed at Live from the Console in Mumbai.)
The Fog by Rachel Sermanni
I’m going to ask a bunch of random questions, just answer whatever pops into your head.
What song can you listen to a 1000 times and never get sick of?
‘Had I A Golden Thread’ by Eva Cassidy. I love that song. I’ve never got tired of it. I’ve listened to it since I was very, very young. (Photo credit: Rex Features)
I love listening to Erik Satie, who is just a minimalist piano player, I could listen to him forever.
If I came to visit you in your hometown, where would you take me?
Into the forest. We’re only a small village, and this is the forest (Sermanni draws it out on the table). So we’ve got the Cairngorms mountain range, and there’s a valley, then our house, then the forest, and there’s Landmark, this theme park. And you can hear people all through the day, just screaming and having a great time and it’s so normal. So maybe I’d take you to Landmark and the forest (hopefully, this will be less Blair Witch than it sounds).
What are you listening to on your iPod right now?
Quite a lot of jazz. I’ve been listening to Thelonius Monk who is a piano player (for a jazz 101, check out our latest Captain Awesome playlist here). I put it on shuffle. The major ones that come up are Tom Waits, Nick Drake…
M: Now that is the kind of music I would listen to in a forest.
RS: YES! He is a forest man. Have you heard Vashti Bunyan before? Her album has sort of become a folk legend, of legendary status but it never took off at the time but it was produced by the same producer as Nick Drake’s. Check her out she’s amazing. With the same flutes, very amazing, very sweet. She sings (and Sermanni breaks out into song), “just another diamond day, just another blade of grass”, have you heard of that song, “Da dada dadadada dada.” Nop. It’s a beautiful song. Check it out. (Yes, check out the tune by Vashti Bunyan below.)
Photos by Naman Saraiya
Twitter
Facebook