Polly Paulusma "Wildfires"

[Mr Onion]

Polly will release her new album in March 2025, but at over two hours long her record label in understandable not able to cover the initial costs (Vinyl mastering , stampers etc) so she has set up a crowdfunder campaign on Kickstarter to help cover these costs and make the triple vinyl happen.








Its a great project, lets make it happen

TL:DR

What is Wildfires and why does it matter?

Wildfires is an important album for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it explores the boundaries between prose, poetry and song in a visceral and emotionally charged way. Musically it challenges perceived genre boundaries not just between poetry, prose and song, but also between folk, singer-songwriter and jazz, borrowing from and leaning into them all in equal measure to create a sonic landscape entirely its own, unexpected and unpredictable. All my life I have explored this hinterland, weaving back and forth between song and literature, trying to figure out why I don't see any difference between them. This project is the blooming of all that thinking.

Secondly, Wildfires works to shine a songful and poetic light on the emotional experiences of an older woman, a corner of life perhaps less represented in popular music culture. The mix of spoken word and song paints a rich and startlingly honest picture of the complex emotional landscapes of long-term relationships from a peculiarly feminine perspective.

Wildfires was written in a frenzy between October 2022 and August 2023, when a series of songs and prose-poems poured out of me in a violent manner that was new to me through morning pages. The pieces were all connected by the fact that they were about different kinds of love: the love(s) I feel for my husband, the love for my children, the grief-love I feel for my lost babies, and my dead father, and the dead mother of my dear friend; songs about my love of living friends and family, songs through which I hope to love someone after I am dead, songs about my love for and rage at that divine force that sometimes feels cruelly absent. There were also a series of songs about a fierce and prohibited kind of love when we are drawn against our will to that force in another, feelings of wildfire, which I have redirected these past two years back into song in a kind of artistic feedback loop. It's all in there.

Performing these songs and poems live recently with my bass player, friend and collaborator Jon Thorne, who cowrote all the prologues with me, one audience member wrote afterwards -- “It was magical - you were magical. You held the room so warmly and lightly, you left space for that magic to flourish. A joy to witness you [...] sink into that place where you’re just channeling something, and it was all the more profound for the newness and wetness of your material, still malleable, and bursting with this witchy wisdom I’m catching glimpses of myself as 40 becomes hazy and 50 looms large. […] Your spoken word is so connecting when you say it live. […] Thanks so much for sharing, I loved it more than you could know."

The songs that comprise Wildfires, and the poem/prose sections that are the interstices between the songs, are the reflections of this late-40-something woman, "as 40 becomes hazy and 50 looms large", a brutally honest representation of all the remarkable fire, beauty, devastation and rawness I have felt.

Legendary producer Ethan Johns listened to my demos and agreed to help me make this record. We took a studio in Wales in November 2023 in the Preseli Hills. With Eth on drums, Neil Cowley on piano/synths, and Thorne on bass, we recorded a heroic 20 songs in five days; Eth and I then spent a day roaming the hills recording spoken-word passages in caves and churches, alongside running streams, down quarries, and up against holy standing stones.

The resultant epic song-poem Wildfires, in two parts, straddles two hours, and makes a journey through childhood, sparks into the fiercest heat wildfire of love-lust, and collapses in embers through layers of disbelief and questioning to arrive finally at a sense of what real romantic love is, the non-glamorous version, love in the drudge, love with its rubber gloves on.

Wildfires is like a movie for the ears, a remarkable, devastating, uplifting journey, one best undertaken in two sittings, one for each part. This is a big ask in an age where the attention span is reported to be less than 5 seconds. But I know we can still do it. Wildfires is rebelliously long form.

Why do I need your help?

I am raising money to press a triple vinyl album version of Wildfires which is coming out on double CD and digitally in March 2025.

Because of its epic-poem length (two parts of one hour each), pressing vinyl is prohibitively expensive. Running across three discs, and in an unsure market, vinyl is a risky proposition.

Sonically, 'Wildfires' is sumptuous. Its 1970s feel and warmth comes in part from its methodology: it was recorded mostly live in performance under the stewardship of Johns, and the vintage microphones and equipment give the sound the feel of a long lost Carole King or Rickie Lee Jones record. Everything about it screams for vinyl.

I believe this music needs to be printed on vinyl. Music sounds better on record, putting a vinyl on encourages the kind of attentive listening that Wildfires demands, vinyl will outlast other formats in terms of longevity and playability, and it is quite simply a beautiful artefact.

How can you help?

I am selling real estate on the album artwork in the form of names on the inner sleeve of disc 2 to raise the cash to make the printing possible. This is about glory, legacy, about being recognised on the artwork forever.

In return for your pledge, your name (and you can gift the name of others) will be printed on the inner sleeve of the artwork. Buy as many spots as you like. I hope you will pledge as much as you can and buy your place in phonographic history.

The higher the pledge the larger the font will be.

Different pledge tiers will buy small, medium or large font sizes.

We will decide the actual font size when we know how many names we have.

Higher tier £500 and £1000 pledgers will, in addition, receive a physical copy of the triple vinyl when it is pressed.

Important note to reiterate -- this IS NOT a presale (unless you feel like giving over £500+). It's a fundraiser to help me cover the base manufacturing costs of the discs themselves. Donors will buy 'real estate' on the album artwork, and help me to bring the retail costs down from £75 (hopeless, no shop will take it) to nearer £40 (more workable). It will be you as a donor who makes this project viable.

Please pledge now to buy your place in phonographic history!

[Mr Onion]

... and if you haven't heard of her before, you can check her out on Bandcamp

[Mr Onion]

Update from Polly via Bandcamp

---

Hello Bandcamp followers

Thank you for all your support to date.

I’m writing to let you know that a new album, Wildfires, is on the way. It will be coming out in spring 2025 on CD and digital formats.

If you’d like to see a vinyl version of this album next spring I would be so grateful for your help.

Yesterday I started a Kickstarter to raise funds to press the album on vinyl. It will spread across 3 discs due to its epic length, and as a result I need to raise £5000 to cover the cut and manufacturing costs.

In the first 24 hours we raised 25% of the total, but there’s a long way to go.

You can buy your name on the inner sleeve for a variety of different amounts — the bigger the donation, the bigger the font.

Please check the project out, watch the video and get a sneak preview of the opening track:

www.kickstarter.com/projects/pollypaulu ... ner-sleeve

You are the real music fans who buy the music and I’m so grateful for you!

All my best and see you soon
Polly P x

[Mr Onion]

Great news, with 19 days to go funding pledges has hit the £3k mark

wildfires.jpg

[Dan Steel]

Pledge sent hope the album gets released

[Mr Onion]

Good man, its looking promising so lets keep everything crossed

[Mr Onion]

polly.jpg

£3k5 with 8 days to go, come on people lets make it happen.

[Mr Onion]

5 days to go and only £400 left to hit the target.

polly.jpg

[Mr Onion]

GREAT NEWS! With four days to go the target has been hit.

I will use any over-funds to help me press up a beautiful book of lyrics and poems to accompany the release, so nothing will go unused.

So its getting better and better.

[Dan Steel]

GREAT NEWS! With four days to go the target has been hit.

I will use any over-funds to help me press up a beautiful book of lyrics and poems to accompany the release, so nothing will go unused.

So its getting better and better.

Great stuff it will be less than half price when they see my name on it

[Mr Onion]

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Thanks to everyone who contributed, target reached and money left towards the book

[Mr Onion]

The test pressings have arrived with Polly

Roll on March

[Mr Onion]

https://pollypaulusma.bandcamp.com/albu ... -wildfires

Late Feb Release @£38-99 (Vinyl) £10-99 (CD)