Luke Ritchie - The Water's Edge [CD]

Debut album from singer/songwriter Luke Ritchie, featuring lush string arrangements by Nico Muhly, and produced by Paul Savage. Luke Ritchie set himself a challenge in 2010 to record a song a week for six months. Between January and June he recorded twenty-six songs and released them as a weekly podcast and chose the best as the basis for his debut album, The Water’s Edge. Luke recorded the album at Chemical Underground’s studio in Glasgow with award winning producer Paul Savage [Franz Ferdinand, Arab Strap, Mogwai]. A mutual friend put Luke in touch with classical composer Nico Muhly [Bjork, Anthony & The Johnsons, Grizzly Bear] who had been so impressed on hearing the podcasts that he offered to supply a number of string parts for the album. The Water’s Edge has done some serious travelling already; at the end of last year, Ritchie decided to send his album out all over the world, to see how people would react. He recorded the songs on to 80 cheap MP3 players and put them inside tobacco tins with instructions on a luggage label to listen and pass on, but also to photograph the ‘music boxes’ in interesting locations.‘I’ve sent out almost 50 far, mostly with friends who are travelling abroad, and the response has been incredible,’ says the singer. ‘People have sent back pictures from Tibet, the Pyramids, from a beach in Australia, in front of the Chinese terracotta army and under a waterfall in South America. I’m expecting some soon from Baghdad and Palestine. I put the photos on my website. Somehow, seeing the album in people’s hands, in so many vastly different locations, makes it more tangible.’ ”Sky-scraping vocals” The Guardian