Bridget Hayden and The Apparitions - Cold Blows The Rain *Pre-Order

Release Date Friday 21st February 2025
All pre-orders will be dispatched/made ready for collection on that day.

The reinterpreted traditional folk songs that make up Cold Blows The Rain are shaped by the land and the
weather. Wrapped in mist and drizzle, the crawling drone of low heavy clouds on flat-top moors. The sound
of the dark Calder Valley floor and sun starved hills in West Yorkshire in the North of England.
A must for fans of Karen Dalton, ØXN, Shirley Collins and Lisa O'Neill - it's found a home on local Todmorden
label Basin Rock (Jim Ghedi, Myriam Gendron, Michael Chapman, Juni Habel, Trevor Beales).

In Todmorden, the oddly-named market border town in West Yorkshire with a habit for embracing the weird and wonderful, a
burst of sunshine is a precious thing. Through the thick of Winter, through every season in fact, the town’s folk are used to the
wind and rain, fog and mist. As much a part of the town as the trademark deep valley it sits in, here the lay of the land invites the
weather in, just as it does the many musicians, artists, and unique characters that have come to call the place home over the
centuries.
Bridget Hayden is one such soul who found a home among these hills. The experimental musician, who invites the ghosts in for
the classic folk songs that make up her stunning new album, knows only too well about such weather, how rare and treasured the
breaks from it are. Her favourite thing to do in the valley, she says, is “to make the most of every tiny minute of sunshine.”
Such aspirations nearly derailed the recording of Cold Blows the Rain, her new eight-song collection released via the
Todmorden- based label Basin Rock. Having hired the town’s Oddfellow’s Hall to record these new songs in the late summer of
2022, Hayden says the weather was so good she ended up basking in every second of it, only moving inside to begin recording
when the sun was setting, working deep into the night to make up the time.
There’s a good chance, however, that it had to be this way. The songs that make up Cold Blows the Rain are not made for the
sunlight. They come, instead, wrapped in mist and coated with drizzle, those elements shaping the album as much as the voice
and the instruments held within, as real but ambiguous as the ghosts that linger in the shadows. The sound of the dark valley
floor.
Mostly centred around meditative and experimental improvisation, Bridget’s work to-date has seen her spend more than two
decades recording and performing on the underground music scene. She’s also toured internationally both as a solo artist and as
part of bands such as Schisms and The Telescopes, while working on various side-projects with the likes of Folklore Tapes.
For all of this sonic exploration, so much of her work has been formed around elements of traditional folk aesthetics and, over
time, she began to piece together a collection of reinterpreted traditional songs that she absorbed as a child from her mother:
through The Dubliners and Muddy Waters, to Bessie Smith and The Leadbelly Songbook. Harvesting her love for Nina Simone,
Karen Dalton, Margaret Barry, and more, Bridget takes these traditional songs and transforms them into something uniquely
evocative
"It goes back to the womb,” Bridget says of that connection. “I would not call it a memory as it is so deep within my blood and

bones. My mum was the source, she sang all the time, as part of life. So it was a very lulling and natural introduction. It seemed
common to hear her singing – unbeknownst to her – in time with a raindrop dripping at the window,” Bridget continues. “I’ve
always wanted to do a folk record as I love these songs so much. It comes much more naturally to me to sing other people’s
words, especially when they’re as beautiful as these old verses.”
Underpinned by waves of analogue reverb, and led by Bridget’s stirring and weather-beaten voice, the songs on Cold Blows the
Rain drift and crawl like low heavy clouds on flat-top hills, shaped by the land. The backdrop is equally as arresting, all subtle
gloom cast in shadow, a gentle but pronounced swirling of textures, crafted from harmonium and violin courtesy of The
Apparitions (Sam Mcloughlin and Dan Bridgewood-Hill).
“The weather speaks the most eloquently about human loss,” Bridget says, articulating such sentiments. “It’s good to feel
enveloped by something so much vaster than ourselves. The rain and the tears all become one.”
1 Factory Girl 2 Are You Going to Leave Me? 3 Blackwater Side 4 She Moved Through the Fayre 5 When I Was In My Prime 6
Lovely on the Water 7 Red Rocking Chair 8 The Unquiet Grave

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