Meeting with a Judas Tree

Duval Timothy’s work sits in a mellow space between jazz, sound collage, ambient, and electronic music—the kind of thing you’d be more likely to hear in a museum installation than a club. Recorded between London, Duval’s hometown of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and a residency in Spoleto, Italy, *Meeting With a Judas Tree* is interesting, in part, for its ability to mix subtlety with a sense of almost continuous surprise, whether it’s the sudden plucking sounds in “Wood” or the way “Thunder” seems to bend and splinter in midair. It’s too engaging to be background music, but you’ll want it on for the same reasons you might pick up fresh flowers: it quietly brightens the room.

Recorded 2019 - 2022 Primarily recorded at my home studio in South London, Carrying Colour studio in Freetown, my old studio in Rotherhithe Old Police Station, and Casa Mahler in Spoleto. Recorded on different pianos, including an upright in Freetown that had lost the felt of its hammers due to the humidity creating a harpsichord-like sound as the raw wood struck the strings. Other prominent instruments featured are Moog Grandmother, double bass, electric guitar and Juno-G. Part of the piano recordings on 'Up' and 'Drift' were composed and recorded through April 2021, whilst I was an artist in residence at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Spoleto, for the 'Mahler, The Song of the Earth' project in partnership with Mahler Foundation. During the residency, I was studying and creating work in response to the life and work of Gustav Mahler, in particular 'Das Lied Von Der Erde' (The Song of the Earth) — a vast song cycle engaging with nature, forgiveness, friendship, and mortality themes. While making this record, I wanted to explore what the natural environment means personally. I went on many trips into nature to engage with plant life and natural materials. These included everyday strolls around South London, walks with my mum in the hills surrounding Bath (Up), hikes through Freetown, the hills of Spoleto, up line in Ghana and nature sanctuaries in Sierra Leone (Wood). I found incredible examples of nature in all of these contexts, which I felt personally close to. I made field recordings with my phone or Zoom recorder, documenting various birds, insects, monkeys, bats, plants, trees, stones and so on, which are all on the record.

The polymath brings his signature compositional style back to the piano for an expressive album that is intimate, immediate, and, for all its ambition, easy to connect to.

Passive listeners, turn back now. South London-based Duval Timothy’s fourth studio album, Meeting with a Judas Tree, is a swirling montage of structured composition and ambient electronica, a free-formed and dynamic rendering of emotional vitality that calls for close listening.

The pianist’s meditative solos are mutilated by multiple effects pedals, drones, voices and even birdsong – but it only adds to the mystery