I (Harrie/Huck Hastings) am looking after In The Pines for a few week while Johanna takes a well deserved holiday. I never turn down an opportunity to host this beautiful show if I can help it, and coming straight off the back of a tour with limited time I thought it was a really fun opportunity to invite some really special local songwriters on the show to do some guest selecting, have a chat and get to know each other a little better.
For the second instalment in this series I was joined by station sweethearts Sarah Levins & Jerome' Blaze, two incredible artists whose lives (and art) are inextricably entwined.
Sarah Levins writes like a painter, capturing all of the magnificence hidden within the mundanity of the everyday.
"So forty years would pass
With rings, with kids, with family dogs
With day old bread and butter
The morning breath and tired eyes
The long goodnights and lullabies
And the coffee percolator"
Historically my north star has always lived in the unknown, or perhaps in the pursuit of finding out. With some years on me and a little more settled-ness, I oft find myself suspended by strings of opposing forces, trying to balance my artistic ambitions and desire for movement, freedom and (for lack of a better word) chaos, with my resonant affinity for the quiet, steady hum of my domestic pursuits.
In Jerome Blaze's debut record Living Room you can feel the space in which the music was made. The breath and creak and hours lived in the house the couple share together. Combining texture, spoken word and field recordings into lush and spacious arrangements, Jerome tells his story of this city in collage.
It is a beautiful thing to have people show you who they are by way of curation and I was excited to find out about their respective approaches to storytelling and hear some works that were special to them.