The Sea Cabinet
| The Sea Cabinet | ||||
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| Studio album by Gwyneth Herbert | ||||
| Released | 20 May 2013 (UK) | |||
| Studio | Britten Studio, Aldeburgh Music, Suffolk | |||
| Genre | Jazz; Singer-songwriter; Song cycle | |||
| Length | 51:13 | |||
| Label | Monkeywood (MONKEYWOOD02) | |||
| Producer | Gwyneth Herbert and Dave Price | |||
| Gwyneth Herbert chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| All About Jazz |   |
| Financial Times |  |
| The Independent | |
The Sea Cabinet, the sixth album by British singer-songwriter Gwyneth Herbert, was released on 20 May 2013. It takes the form of a song cycle and was critically acclaimed, receiving four-starred reviews in The Financial Times and The Independent and a 4.5-starred review in All About Jazz.
In January 2010, Gwyneth Herbert was commissioned by Snape Maltings in Suffolk as artist in residence to write, record and perform a new body of work based on stories of the sea. This was performed in October 2010 at Snape Maltings.
An album of this music, The Sea Cabinet, was produced by Gwyneth Herbert and Dave Price. It was recorded and engineered by Robert Harder at Britten Studio at Aldeburgh Music, Suffolk, with additional recording and engineering by Robert Harder at Satellite Studios and by Dave Price at the Old Locker Room. The album was mixed by Robert Harder, Gwyneth Herbert and Dave Price and was mastered by Robert Harder. The album's cover artwork was by Sarah Jones, with photography by Rosie Reed Gold.
The album, financed through a crowd-funding initiative, was released on Herbert's own Monkeywood label in May 2013 and launched in a series of concerts from 23 to 26 May at Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End.
The album takes the form of a song cycle and a storyline which Herbert describes as follows: "Every day, a woman walks the beach alone, obsessively collecting every discarded and washed up object that she finds. She takes them home to catalogue each one with the care and rigour of a scientist. The artefacts are then placed in 'The Sea Cabinet', and every one sings with the memory of a secret sea-set story – the victory of a Fishguard cobbler's wife, a jaded seaside hotel, a sunken chapel, the shifting sands of wartime Alderney, the dangerous allure of the King's Shilling, the loves and the losses and the stars and the whores and the drink and the drowning and the drip, drip, drip..."
A new version of Herbert's "Lorelei" is included on the album; this song also featured on her previous albums Ten Lives and All the Ghosts.
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