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A MUSICAL duo from Lower Earley are putting the finishing touches on their debut album after wowing crowds at festivals this summer.
Singer-songwriters Raji Kulatilake and Helen Cuthbertson, otherwise known as Bright Shadows, have been performing together for several years, honing their unique brand of ‘folk-pop-rock’ and spine-tingling harmonies at festivals and gigs across the region.
Helen said: “We’ve played a lot of festivals this year, we played at Towersey and they really get what we do, we fit in really well there.
“We’re looking for more places to play in the local area, we travel to London a lot for gigs but we want to put down our roots locally.”
The duo are now putting together the final songs for an album, which they hope to release in time for next summer.
Raji said: “We’ve got about eight or nine songs down, some are completely finished while others need working on, and we want about four more to put the album out.
“We’ve had people come up to us at our gigs to ask if we have a CD, and up until now we haven’t.
“It will be very much an acoustic album, we want to recreate what people would hear at one of our gigs. All too often, we see a band live who we really like, and you buy their album to find that it is a lot more electronic, that’s not what we want to achieve.
“Songwriting is a strange process, it’s almost like a full-time job in itself. Sometimes I write an entire song musically, and then go back and fit the words around it. Other times, I find myself with the words already in place and the music just flows naturally.”
Helen said: “I’m really different, I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and intentionally written a song about a certain subject. Sometimes words will just come to me, I’ll feel inspired and I’ll sit down to get it all out in one go, but it’s hard trying to find the time to commit to songwriting, especially when you have a job as well.”
Raji added: “We’ve tried to do it, to allocate an evening to writing a song, but it’s hard. I find the best songs are the ones that happen naturally and organically.
“When we first got together, it took a while for us to find our sound. We found the songs we were individually writing were very ‘Helen-esque’ or ‘Ravi-style’ so we had to work hard to find something that incorporated both.”
The result is a folk-rock mix of guitars, percussion and haunting harmonies, which leave audiences tapping their feet along within minutes.
Raji added: “We really love those intimate gigs where they may not be many people there, but they’re all listening. That is so rewarding as a musician, to see people actually listening to your songs.
“When we played Towersey, we were in one of the smaller tents, but it was brilliant and everyone was so engrossed and we got some amazing feedback afterwards.
“We’ve got to a stage where we can be more discerning with the gigs we play, it can be very hard when you’re first starting out to play a gig and have no-one actually listen to you.
“One day we’d love to play music as our full-time jobs, but in the meantime we will continue doing what we love, and that is writing and performing our music to as many people as possible.”
Bright Shadows play The Acoustic Couch in Bracknell with The Black Feathers on Thursday, September 28. For tickets and more information, visit www.facebook.com/brightshadowsmusic.
