Featuring piano that rolls and sways in waves, the new single from Martha Tilston is breathtakingly beautiful. Everything rests upon those flowing keys. Tilston’s pure voice is emotionally resonant, well-supported by delicate backing vocals and flourishes of haunting violin.
Tilston has demonstrated her many talents through her latest project, the newly released romantic film ‘The Tape’. Not only did she write, direct and star in the movie, she also recorded the soundtrack live on set, which is believed to be a first in the UK for a non-concert film. Tilston’s character is a singer-songwriter, who is struggling to find musical success and drifts through her life as a cleaner. However, she finds inspiration in a piano in a cliff-top house on the Cornish coast, recording an album onto a single tape. Her life and those around her begin to change.
‘Sadness of the Sea’ is the first single from the soundtrack that accompanies the movie. Tilston explains the song’s themes, saying she: “… was inspired by how I feel when I see the plastic that washes up on the shores near my home. However, it is also a song of thanks to the beauty of our natural world. In the film, my character reminds us that we inherit and hand on this beautiful world, passing through only as guardians of it. There has never been a time more pertinent to look at our relationship with our changing environment. My character Tally holds a lantern up to it with this song…the wild fires, the warming seas, the questioning of our detachment as humans from our creative selves, the very ground we stand on and the seas we swim in. Do we know how to make things good? This is the only time to find out.“
Tilston talks of her Cornish childhood and how she would sit: “…on giant granite rocks perched on the hills looking out at the vast blue ocean, understanding that I was connected to an older story.” There is something of that sense of timelessness in this song. Film and music come together in a magical combination here. Enjoy.
