Snowflake Malfunction

Some pictures and words, not all of which work

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Are you the main character in your own movie, or a minor part that ends up on the cutting-room floor? “The Movie” from The Night Herons is about how special moments don’t always turn out like you imagine.

It’s an upbeat mix of pop, piano riffs and ska - check it out now!

https://open.spotify.com/track/0dsQgn998kAYU6fSCOhckQ

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Wandering the streets of a city at night in the rain, you can imagine yourself as a gumshoe detective from film noir days. This is a video of a song by The Night Herons called Rainy Streets that evokes that mood.

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Imagine that love is all around you, and you just need to be able to let it in- it’s like a sea of love, under the waterfall. This song from The Night Herons takes that journey.

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Solstice is about the dark of winter and the coming of the light of spring. The story of Persephone tells of how she’s forced to spend half her life in the underworld and half back in her normal realm. Our song Persephone, imagines her on the Underground, and that she has learned to live with spending half her life there - that she is both Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld - that there is light and dark in all our lives.

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By eating pomegranate seeds offered to her by Hades, King of the Underworld, Persephone is compelled to stay there for half the year. We used the pomegranate to represent the Queen of the Underworld for our song Persephone.

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I saw this depiction of Persephone walking barefoot in the archaeological museum in Naples. So delicate and beautiful. It’s from a villa at Stabiae (Castellammare die Stabia) near Pompeii that was destroyed by the eruption in 79 AD.

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It’s pretty wet out - here’s a new recording of our song “Rainy Streets” - on Spotify and other platforms.

When Rachel and I very first started doing music together as The Night Herons, I asked her what an original Night Herons song might be about - and she pulled out this description of Boston in the rain that she’d written when on a worktrip. This song, inspired by that, is about finding magic in a seemingly miserable situation like a rainstorm and thinking actually this can be wonderful, if you’re there with someone who’s determined to enjoy it with you. In the decade or so we’ve been doing this song, Rachel’s singing of it has transformed, finding such rich and inventive places to take the melody and lyrics.

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This is a painting of Persephone (Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She is holding a pomegranate because she was tricked into being bound to the underworld by eating pomegranate seeds. The model was Jane Burden, muse to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists, who later married William Morris. She was born in Oxford and there is a plaque to her in St Helen’s Passage near Turf Tavern.

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This is video for the Night Herons song Persephone, based on the 1934 film The Goddess of Spring, about Persephone being taken to the Underworld.

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Going down into the London Underground feels a bit like descending into the underworld - and the song Persephone imagines meeting the underworld goddess on the Tube.

She’s been trapped down there but also a part of her feels at home, because she’s come to love the light and the dark. This is an echo of the duality of spring and winter.

Through her descent she’s stripped away layers of self, in an act of self-discovery.

Persephone is the new single from The Night Herons, an Oxfordshire band

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Original shows and popular videos in different categories from producers and creators you love

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