BOBBIE WATSON AND JON SEAGROATT

Yearn (Songs 1999-2002) BOBBIEWATSONJONSEAGROATT.BANDCAMP.COM

Rare and unreleased music from British duo’s burgeoning relationship.

This 15-track round-up from Bobbie Watson and Jon Seagroatt comes from the years when they were friends and collaborators, both in long-term relationships, but with ardour stirring and leading to marriage in 2003. In that time the pair shape-shifted musically out of Seagroatt’s ambient, typographically maverick trio B So glObal to Drift, to the marvellously named Colins Of Paradise, the tracks ranging from experimental pop, to jazz to dark folk, two-step and more.

Watson was known as co-vocalist for unsettling folk-proggers Comus and her high, youthful and exploratory tone suits the groovy, almost trip hop starter, 70bpm – one of many tracks grounded by Seagroatt’s wonderful “furtive” and “wobbly” wind and brass instrumentation, such as highlight Compass – as well as the modern soul-jazz of 139, and keyboard-led, Vortex Club bluesiness of Diversions. Watson’s lyrics are loaded with meaning – ‘I talk to myself – don’t cross that line’, she sings on Talk To Myself – and while not hugely polished (that’s not the point), Yearn works pretty well as a series of fleshed-out DAW sketches, musical bonding, experimentation abundant with suppressed emotion.