Nothing excites Virginia Astley more than the familiar comforts of home. Not the late-’70s underground circuit where she got her start, playing gigs at seedy pubs as a member of the new-wave outfit Victims of Pleasure. Not the subsequent post-punk wave either, when she had the opportunity to record with titans like Echo and the Bunnymen and Siouxsie and the Banshees. While on tour with the Teardrop Explodes in 1981, she played in a group called the Ravishing Beauties, contrasting the psychedelic assault of the headlining band with opulent melodic sweeps and her uniquely ghostly vocals. The Beauties never released a record (though they did record in John Peel’s BBC studios), but the music they made together laid the groundwork for the delicate soundscapes Astley would continue to explore in her solo career. Her debut album, 1983’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, came two years after the tour wrapped up, with a title that makes her preference for solitude abundantly clear.
Gardens was a work of pastoral theater that infused sprightly woodwinds and strings with recordings from the riverside village of Moulsford-on-Thames, looping bleating livestock and rushing streams into miniature dioramas of rustic life. It would remain the only record of its kind in Astley’s catalog for four decades as she explored new modes, incorporating song and poetry into her worlds. With her new album The Singing Places, she returns with another assemblage of field recordings and elegant acoustic arrangements. She’s finally revisiting the verdant garden of her imagination.
Astley collected sounds for The Singing Places in various locations around the upper bounds of the River Thames, which becomes more rural and sparsely populated the further it stretches away from the bustle of big cities. She said in a recent interview that she’s often struck by inspiration while on walks in the countryside; walking along the Thames is like turning the clock back to eons past. Centuries-old church bells ring out; rickety watermills creak as they revolve; Astley’s footsteps can occasionally be heard trodding well-worn pathways. There’s a sense that she’s enraptured by the history surrounding her as she passes through sites untouched by industrialization and weathered by the passage of time.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
