Songs Of Place OUT 03/10/22

Songs Of Place

What does your imagination conjure when you think of Huddersfield? Hillside clothier houses, intricate canal networks, mills on tributaries, heathland farmsteads and tunnelled train lines?  Becks, bogs, dales, dells, gritstone, towpaths, and turnpikes? Bus stops, rain, sandstone houses, spire churches?

The new Songs Of Place EP by singer-songwriter Sam Hodgson (aka Samh) touches upon all these subjects. His project, applies the techniques of some of the world’s great songwriters to songs about Huddersfield and its surrounding villages. 

Canals, moors and mills. Samh’s new short release EP tells of the untold histories of a typical northern town. Songs of Place, recorded in the places they are about takes the listener up into the bleak Marsden hills, through the longest canal tunnel in Britain, and into the dark, reverberant cellar of one of Huddersfield’s only remaining working textile mills.

Tracklisting

Naked Landscape

Is a song about the bleak moors and its connection to our bodies.

Gateway to Saddleworth

Gateway to Saddleworth’ speaks of the building of the Huddersfield narrow canal from the point of view of the people that built it, rather than the owners and architects, that despite their incompetence, mostly get the credit. It contrasts the jovial church and brass festivals over the hill in Saddleworth, with the cost of progress digging through the side. The chorus sings ‘you can ramble over the top, my friends, or tunnel through the side.’

Cropper Lads

Is a new inversion of an old local folk song about the Huddersfield Luddites.

Run Of The Mill

‘Run of the Mill’ uses the sounds of Bates Mill as the pitch and rhythm whilst Samh’s vocals glide through a plethora of natural reverb, bellowing from the empty, collumned basement of the mill.  ittakes a contemporary look at new uses of old mills, using mill sounds as its foundation.

Samh T-Shirt

The last few Samh t-shirts available via the link.