Beschreibung
Travellers Two is a full length recording from the duo of
Tara Burke (Fursaxa) and Sharron Kraus.
Togerther Kraus & Burke create an ethereal
record of dark-folk magic.
Tara Burke and Sharron
Kraus were due to travel to Finland together for a week but missed the
flight, so instead they decided to spend the week recording together and
Travellers Two is the result. The time was spent out in the fields,
visiting burial mounds, and then coming back to Sharron's home studio to work.
They had played previously together and done some recording but this is the
first time an album was conceived.
Fursaxa is
Tara Burke. Formerly a member of the Silbreeze
band UN, Tara started her
Fursaxa project in 1999 after UN disbanded.
After being a long time resident of Philadelphia, Tara decided
to leave the "city of brotherly love" for the touring life. So from April
2005-April 2006 she toured extensively throughout the UK, the USA, and Europe
with friends and fellow musicians Jack Rose, Sharron
Kraus, Alexander Tucker, Christina
Carter, Marcia Bassett, and the Spires that in
the Sunset rise, to name a few. For her live performances she uses
mostly looped vocals, flutes, and percussion, a casio keyboard, guitar, and
mandolin, in an attempt to transport her audience into the ethereal realms. On
her forthcoming album Alone in the Dark Wood she employs a myriad of
instruments such as mandolin, guitar, violin, banjo, balalaika, organ, bells,,
flute, percussion, and voice. This album was recorded and mixed in Finland and
Pennsylvania. Tara has recently been collaborating with several
other musicians. Espers member Helena Espvall
and Tara have a duo called Anahita,
and in 2006 released Arcana en Cantos on the Deserted Village label
from Ireland. They are currently working on their second release. Currently,
Fursaxa is playing and recording her music in the rural hills
of Pennsylvania.
Sharron Kraus is a
singer/musician/songwriter who creates music rooted in the folk traditions of
England and Appalachia. Her work is characterized by soil-rich vocals, haunting
banjo, fine acoustic guitar and visionary wordcraft. Her songs are populated by
a carnival array of fatally charismatic characters, telling tales of
enslavement, perversion, incest, obsession, love and death. Sharron?s live
performances are stark, compelling, and delicate. As with her music, her
performance continues the tradition of the balladeer. She is like the roving
storyteller, bringing tales of terror, sadness and joy to a stranger?s hearth on
a dark and stormy night.
Sharron?s debut album
Beautiful Twisted was released by Australian psych label Camera Obscura
in 2002 and received rave reviews around the world. It was listed in
Rolling Stone Magazine?s Critics? Top Albums of 2002. After
touring with US psychedelic folk band The Iditarod, she
collaborated with them on an album of wintry songs and soundscapes entitled
Yuletide and released by avant/experimental label Elsie and Jack in
2003
Sharron?s second solo album, Songs of Love and
Loss, was recorded at home in Oxford and at Dungeon Studios in the
Cotswolds. The album features Jane Griffiths on fiddle and
viola, Jon Fletcher on harmonica and occasional guitar, banjo
and vocals, Colin Fletcher on bass, as well as BBC Folk
Award-winning fiddler Jon Boden and Grammy-nominated early
music violinist Giles Lewin. The album was finished in
Providence and mixed with Jeffrey Alexander (The
Iditarod, Black Forest/Black Sea).
Songs of Love and Loss is a natural follow-up to Beautiful
Twisted, in places darker and more discordant, in others gentler and
sweeter.
Other recent and ongoing collaborations include The Black
Dove, an album written and recorded with Californian folk songsmith
Christian Kiefer, Tau Emerald, a duo with
Tara Burke (Fursaxa) and Leaves From Off the Tree, an
album of traditional songs recorded with Meg Baird and
Helena Espvall released on Bo? Weavil Recordings.
Sharron has been featured in The Wire, Dirty Linen, New Folk Sounds,
Arthur Magazine, Ptolemaic Terrascope and Broken Face. She has been interviewed
on BBC Radio 3 for ?A Place Called England? discussing the future of English
folk music and recorded sessions for BBC Radio Scotland, Freakzone on Radio 6,
and independent radio stations across the US. Her fanbase includes veteran
folkies Shirley Collins and Archie Fisher as
well as indie figureheads Michael Gira, David Tibet
and Sonic Youth?s Thurston Moore.



