*BLACK VINYL*

Over the years Sharron Kraus’ musical career has pulled her in many directions and seen her collaborate with artists, poets, writers and researchers, creating soundtracks, podcasts, musical accompaniments and responses. She is an intuitive improviser, a compelling performer and a weaver of musical spells. The spine supporting this body of work is songwriting, though, and it is to this most natural combination of words and music that she always returns. If prose writing is a tool for analysis and working out what we think, because of the emotional dimension music introduces, songwriting is a tool for working out how we feel. KIN, her newest album, is a collection of songs written during and partly in response to the pandemic and the relative isolation it plunged us into. Kraus dives into deep explorations of themes of kinship with other humans as well as the natural world, and of what happens when those kinship bonds are severed or abused. Sonically the album is on a continuum with her previous solo album, Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow, with its layered synths and recorders, and sits somewhere in the space between Jane Weaver’s electronica and the psych/folk of bands like The Left Outsides, Modern Studies.