La Mer

The second riverrun album was called La Mer, and it was released in the spring of 2011.

Like Pentimento, the record was made by layering new experimental pieces with a range of old four-track tape recordings from my archive. A year after I had completed Pentimento, I was back home in Devon for Christmas, and I spent much of that time looking through boxes of my old tapes. In the process I discovered a recording of the sea at the North Somerset coast, from the mid 1990s, when I was a teenager, made at my family's holiday place in Doniford Bay (a piece also referred to in one of the better pieces from Pentimento). I used this tape and a some other old recordings to piece together a series of tracks that referred to Doniford, and to various other seaside places I'd known in my life.

The initial intention was for the first six tracks to be released as a mini-album/EP, but when the label which was going to release it folded, I continued to work on the record and ended up with a double album, largely due to the fact that the last track is over half an hour long.

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La Mer

riverrun

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'La Mer' is the second riverrun album, and it was originally released in the spring of 2011. Like the first record, 'Pentimento', it was made by layering new experimental pieces with a range of old four-track tape Read more
'La Mer' is the second riverrun album, and it was originally released in the spring of 2011.

Like the first record, 'Pentimento', it was made by layering new experimental pieces with a range of old four-track tape recordings that I had in my archive.

I spent most of Christmas 2010, back home in Devon, looking through boxes of my old tapes. In the process I discovered a recording of the sea at the North Somerset coast, from the mid 1990s, when I was a teenager, and when my family had a holiday place at Doniford Bay (a piece also referred to in one of the better pieces from 'Pentimento').

I used this tape and a some other old recordings to piece together a series of tracks that referred to Doniford, and to various other seaside places I'd known in my life.

Read more at: https://danielland.co.uk/la-mer
0:00/???
  1. 1
    Crosswinds 2:14
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  2. 2
    Dunkery Beacon 4:31
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  3. 3
    La Corbière 9:22
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  4. 4
    Jared By The Sea 6:14
    0:00/6:14
  5. 5
    Five Mile Beach 4:22
    0:00/4:22
  6. 6
    Hollow Ponds 3:55
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  7. 7
    Doniford Bay Revisited 10:30
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  8. 8
    Atlantic Beach 7:38
    0:00/7:38
  9. 9
    The Old Light 14:02
    0:00/14:02
  10. 10
    Val De La Mare 7:11
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  11. 11
    Little Sea 4:04
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  12. 12
    Dancing Ledge 35:05
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Psychogeography

Dunkery Beacon, at the summit of Dunkery Hill is the highest point on Exmoor and in Somerset, England. It is also the highest point in southern England outside of Dartmoor. John Fry, a character in R. D. Blackmore's 1869 novel Lorna Doone, calls it the "haighest place of Hexmoor". Dunkery lies four miles from the Bristol Channel at Porlock, and there are extensive views from the summit, from the Bristol and English Channel coasts, to the Brecon Beacons including Pen Y Fan, Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor, the Severn Bridges and Cleeve Hill.

La Corbière (Jèrriais: La Corbiéthe) is the extreme south-western point of Jersey, in the Channel Islands. The name means "a place where crows gather", deriving from the word corbîn meaning crow. It is also the name of a lighthouse situated on a tidal island. A causeway links the lighthouse to shore at low tide, and there is an alarm to warn visitors to clear the causeway as the tide rises. La Corbière has been the scene of many shipwrecks, including that of the mail packet "Express" on 20 September 1859.

Five Mile Beach is a colloquial name for St Ouen's Bay in Jersey, known for its' stretch of unspoiled golden sands. The west-facing beach is a year-round mecca for watersports fans, especially surfers reveling in the rolling Atlantic breakers.

The Old Light is a disused granite lighthouse built on Lundy Island in 1819. Lundy is a large island in the Bristol Channel, lying 12 miles off the coast of Devon, about a third of the distance across the channel from Devon to south Wales. Lundy gives its name to a British sea area, familiar to listeners of the shipping forecast, and has a resident population of 28 people, including volunteers. I spent a week there in 1993, when I was twelve.

Dancing Ledge is part of the Jurassic Coast in Dorset. It is a large, flat area of rock at the base of a small cliff. Dancing Ledge is a former quarry, last used in the 1930s for stone shipped to Kent. Since falling into disuse, a tide-filled swimming pool has been carved into the ledge. At certain stages of the tide when the waves wash over the horizontal surface, the surface undulations cause the water to bob about making the ledge appear to dance.