Brighton singer-songwriter Carrie Tree talks about her first inspirations and recording her second album, Home To The Invisible.

“I wrote my first song when I was 11. I went to Italy to visit family and I met a boy I liked there. That was when my first silly dramatic love song appeared! I finished the song at school and ended up performing it in the school concert at about 13 years old. I was terrified.

“Songs have been an amazing way to process and understand feelings and situations in my life. Songwriting and the process of it has massively comforted and enriched my life, and brought me back to a state of peace and clarity many times. My father played bass and sang harmonies in a band. I grew up on Simon And Garfunkel, The Beatles and later on Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake and John Martyn.

“I created a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign on indiegogo to ask support from fans and friends to help fund Home To The Invisible. It was very humbling and amazing to get the support that we did and it gave us great fuel to properly get it going and to make sure we finished it!

“The wonderful producer Matt Tweed, my percussionist Rowan Sterk and I worked in four-day sessions over a period of a year. We spent time layering up the songs and working with percussion, soft electronic effects, strings and harmonies, having fun experimenting with all sorts of acoustic textures. The instruments vary from cello and double bass, to kora, mbira, bansuri, water drums, hammer dulcimer and balafon.

“I feel like my sound has moved on from my first album, The Kitchen Table. The songs are getting slowly more rhythmical. I have been playing live a lot more with other musicians, which definitely has an effect on production and sound.

“We went to Durban, in South Africa, to record two songs with singers from Ladysmith Black Mambazo. We laid down the vocal and guitar in Brighton Acoustic Studio in Ovingdean. We used a local church in Glynde to record a lot of the percussion. We set up in a little hobbit house for a week in Firle to record dulcimer, harp and other instruments. We spent a week in Falmouth, Cornwall, to record in Troubadour studio and finished in a big old house in Glastonbury.

“It feels incredible to have finally finished this album. In the process I have formed a lovely band and some great musicians to tour with and go deeper with musically. We are touring in Holland in April and gigging throughout the summer. I guess we’ll just see where the album takes us!”

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