Rhythm Fraternity
Sunny & Ed Davidson
It was 2009, or thereabouts my brother Ed Davidson, always the more urbane of us, had recently moved from Bristol Down to the small rural market town that is Glastonbury. I’d discovered, through playing in a number of different bands over the years, just how important getting the right mix of personalities can be to the success of a project; getting the interpersonal dynamics right can be make or break! I realised that I had a golden opportunity right under my nose to work with someone who I really understood, and who really understood me, my bro; a definite shortcut to co-creative harmony!
Now, we’d been on pretty different paths up until this point – he’d been making electronica up in Bristol and I’d been hanging with the folkies down in the Vale of Avalon and at Instrument makers’ festivals in rural central France. However, the fact that we shared an upbringing, some DNA and many of the same musical reference points meant that when we came to put something together, each of us just contributing what came naturally at the time, we ended up with something pretty interesting that seemed to hang together pretty well, despite the apparent differences in where we were coming from.
Also, having both started our musical careers as drummers has meant that we share a rhythmical vocabulary that forms a really strong basis on which to build the rest of it, from the bottom up. And it worked! We worked!
Avalon – home sweet home – is any wonder we sound like a bunch of faeries?!
So, we had a lot of fun throwing all our different influences into the mix and seeing what we ended up with, from dub/reggae to space rock to drum and bass to funk to world music etc, with those clear, soaring Celtic melodies floating over the top and weaving in and out of everything. We started an approach to musical collaboration that has stayed with us ever since.
We’ve been able to maintain that family feel as the band has expanded and we’ve had the pleasure to welcome some truly wonderful people to play with us, who also happen to be extraordinary musicians.
Even projects that I have worked on that have not involved Ed have taken that sense of family, brotherhood, sisterhood, friendship and connectedness as the start point. Rocking out with my brothers and sisters is about the best thing I can think of and I really feel that that sense of fun and fulfilment is contagious.
So, nearly ten years on from kicking off this project together, after two albums and countless gigs all over the UK, we’re still drawing on that reserve of brotherly love to fuel our crazy sonic experiments into the realms of fusion and loving every minute of it!
The biggest buzz of all is getting to share our music with people like YOU, the listener, so thanks so much for taking the time to check us out, we really appreciate it.
If you’d like to hear our first eponymously titled album then click here to listen to CELTECH
Thanks for being a listener and making it all worthwhile.
Sunny Davidson
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