This is a video for the title track of the forthcoming Goldfinches album, Shanti Time. I hope you enjoy it.
I shot the coastal footage last summer, in and around Sennen, near Land’s End, Cornwall. The band silhouettes were filmed later, in James Anderson’s house, by my daughter Grace. James then edited the band silhouettes over the top of my Sennen footage.
The story behind ‘Shanti Time’ is very much rooted in Sennen. I was on holiday there with my family a few years ago and we were staying in a house situated in an elevated position above the cove. I had already written the music and I was playing through the chords on my guitar as I looked out of the window of the ‘Shanti house’. (We gave it this name after learning that a children’s book we were all familiar with had been written there years before. The house features in the story and there were original watercolour illustrations from the book on the house walls.)
As I was strumming the guitar, one of my daughters commented that she was enjoying the music and I decided there and then that I wanted the song to quietly celebrate the peace we were all experiencing on holiday together. ‘Shanti’ is not only the name of the dog in the children’s book, it’s also the Sanskrit word for peace, so it seemed fitting to call the song ‘Shanti Time’. (It’s not the kind of shanty you might expect from a song about the sea!)
Most of the song lyric refers to things that happened during our holiday: from the considerable amount of time we took turns to gaze out of the “high bay window” through to the star-spangled night sky, where we would marvel at the fireworks from Land’s End reflected in the sea. I hope the sense of peace and wonder that we experienced on our holiday is communicated to you through the song.
There is a special guest on this recording (in fact, two special guests). Beth Rowley is a celebrated singer-songwriter from Bristol so I was very pleased when she agreed to contribute some vocals to the song. During the middle section, she and Hester Miller (one of Beth’s singing students) helped create a windswept oceanic atmosphere, as they joined in with the guitar solo, like Sirens singing from the swell of the waves.
Journey of Song 