Album Notes

Praise for \'Waltzing Matilda\' by Beck Siàn...

\"Her (Beck Siàn\'s) voice is so pure, so stirring.
Her heart and spirit are in these songs. This is an intensely personal record: a deeply moving experience for the listener.\"

As a special, personal project, Beck Siàn brings together moving ballads of her Welsh and Irish ancestry and places them side by side with two very Australian songs - one contemporary and one traditional.

\'Waltzing Matilda\' is a heartfelt collection of four songs that connect Beck Siàn with her family and origins. Performed with rare emotional depth, \'Waltzing Matilda\' reveals the Celtic-Australian musical connection as we\'ve never heard it before.

Beck says, \"This collection of songs is a temporary departure from the way that I usually paint with music. The vibe is a touch more \"folky\" and less about ambient soundscapes than on my \'Unfurling\' CD. The songs on \'Waltzing Matilda\' have very strong emotional significance for me, so I wanted to keep them very honest and raw - it\'s all about the feelings and moods. My main concern was to interpret how these songs make me feel, using my voice.

\'Waltzing Matilda\' is a beautiful, sad ghost story. We are exposed to jolly, bouncy versions of this song, especially as children at school, but if you listen to the lyrics, it\'s actually a lonely, melancholy tale of a spirited homeless man. I wanted to present a thoughtful, sympathetic version of this traditional song, and I think I\'ve achieved that.\"


Praise for Beck Siàn\'s CD \'Unfurling\'...

\"Some singers have only to utter a note and instantly, you\'re transfixed. They\'ve reached out, touched your soul. Beck Siàn has that rare quality. In Beck, you sense she\'s on a journey and, for a short while at least, you\'re a travelling companion. She draws inspiration from the subtropical rainforests of her native Australia, creating what she fittingly calls \'Haunted Forest Music\', through voice, guitar, whistle and didgeridoo. It\'s mystical, magical music, spiritual and enchanting. There are touches redolent of Kate Bush, to whom Beck is related, but these are mere brush-strokes of influence. Overall, it\'s as distinctive as it\'s original. With a soprano voice to die for, her approach is highly individual, the ambience emotional and utterly entrancing. She\'s charismatic, convivial and funny on stage - in short, a real show-stopper! Her outstanding debut album is called \'Unfurling\'. And artistically, that is precisely what Beck is doing. Unmissable.\"