Description
Release Date Friday 22nd May 2026
All pre-orders will be dispatched/made ready for collection on that day.
Magic Tuber Stringband act in communion with the natural world around them. Highly skilled players and writers, the trio are leaders within the burgeoning Avant-Folk world. Growing up in Appalachia studying the folk traditions of the region in tandem scientific and observational work in nature, their music appears to weave in and out of the fabric of the landscape. The ensemble continues to stretch the parameters of acoustic instrumental expression with masterful flourishes of dense, textural arrangements, subtle minimalist gestures and deft improvisation. Heavy Water addresses the impact of nuclear production on the environment and the communities within, a musical evocation of destruction and resilience, an embrace of dissonance and tension within moments of transcendence. The inspiration for Heavy Water is rooted in fiddler Courtney Werner’s work as an ecologist in rural South Carolina. Werner explains: “The town of Ellenton, South Carolina was the largest of the towns displaced in 1952 by the U.S. federal government to build the Savannah River Plant, which produced radioactive materials for U.S. nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The former site of Ellenton was dedicated to the extraction of ‘heavy water,’ whereas other areas of the plant focused on manufacturing weapons-grade plutonium and tritium within nuclear reactors. Heavy water is chemically altered to be denser than normal water and is incredibly expensive and time-consuming to synthesize, requiring 52 gallons of river water to produce one fluid ounce. Its denser properties made it valuable for use within the nuclear reactors on the site.” Heavy Water is more than a collection of songs. It is a work whose compositions are entirely modern. Played on traditionally folk acoustic instruments, it defies expectations and emotionally addresses the pain of lives human, flora or fauna irrevocably changed by dominant forces and defiantly persevering.
Track Listing:
Death of Ellenton
Marker of a Drowning
Sound of a Million Stars
Woodpeckers
Scintillation
Blooms in the Rapids
Tribute to the Angels
Where the Place Becomes Forgetting
Wintering Grounds
Soft and Pliable
Dog-Headed Man
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