Huw Costin: Steady Weather's Journey...

Balearic Breakfast allows its listeners to discover brand new music. When I heard "Mud People" by Torn Sail, I simply fell off my chair. I had to meet Huw again...

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1- Far away from today’s musical trends, your new album puts music close to the lyrics, inviting it to tell its own part of the story. Was this a way to reflect Steady weather’s soul or would you rather say that it’s the band’s DNA?

This album certainly has more time, space, and music surrounding the lyrics. I listen to a lot of instrumental music and it can say a lot just without words, just like a cry, a sigh, or a laugh. Also, I tend to write sparely so there is time for the undercurrents to unfold. Perhaps I am making space for myself in a fast life.

2- We also feel that sonically speaking, and compared to the other albums Torn Sail recorded previously, Steady Weather is more open, almost reaching to an ethereal nature, if that makes sense. How did you work on that aspect of the album?

I like to make space for improvisation in our performances – whether live or recorded.  That way we can really express ourselves in the moment we are in and in the environment we are in. It's a way to commune with our audience and it's a magical, physical, mystical happening. I also like to bring the outside world into our music, the spaces let in the unplanned world-sounds – traffic, ice-machines, glasses, coughs. It feels like we hold the time for an indefinite tiny infinite moment.  

3- Although a main positive journey, Steady Weather also has its dark, plunging and frightening moments, I’m thinking here about the incredible track that “Mud People” is… Can you take us through the song and tell us its story, how it evolved and maybe what it means?

I imagine there are many songs that are for Alan Kurdi, the child washed up on the shore, when the boat he was on sunk during a desperate attempt to flee violence, and not just for Alan but the thousands of men, women and other children who've died or been brutally treated trying to escape war and poverty. It's shameful the way we treat people on the run from the hell we in the western world have done so much to create. 

History shows our borders are ephemeral, that common people are pawns pit against each other in the interests of tyrants and psychopaths. It's becoming increasingly clear that as our capitalist society turns our natural world to concrete and gold there are less and less resources to fight over, and so the fighting is getting more desperate and the powerful build bigger and bigger ivory towers.  We need to lay down our borders and brace for a great levelling. Or maybe our leaders try and do good.

4- Steady Weather acts as an invitation to travel. From the title of the album to the songs, beautifully developed and showcasing a breathtaking mixture of sonic layers. Can you share a few memories from the studio with us?

Steady Weather has come from more than a decade of recording. When I listen I feel nostalgia. I remember carrying my children through the Sherwood Forest as babies, I remember my Step-father dying in hospital, I remember losing my job and signing on, I remember being 40, then 50. 

Friends and Nutshell were recorded live in concert at Peggy's Skylight – a Jazz club in Nottingham where we're based.  We were all incredibly nervous in the lead up to the show – for weeks – and we only shared the feeling back stage before the gig. It was just as clubs were allowed to open again in the UK after the Covid Pandemic, and I think there was a residual fear that came to the surface. We played such a beautiful set – John, Henry, Jim, Jeff & I – one of the highlights of my musical life – the relief of being amongst people and around music was tangible – the nerves turned to elation. It was a night I'll never forget and I'm so glad it was recorded.  

Consider Your Position is from when the pubs first opened again, and my partner Caroline and I met up with John, Torn Sail's bass player, in the garden of the Lion. I think it was a sunny April day. I got very drunk and wrote the evening as it happened. 

5- Will you take the album on tour? What can we expect from Torn Sail in the near future?

The band would love to. I don't know if we can afford to. I'm starting to ask around... but we're very under the radar. We've started making another album!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart Huw, and all the best on your musical journey to you and to the ones accompanying you!