Album Notes

The Trufflehunters are singer Shona MacDonald, her brother Allan and their friend Andrew Howie. Allan writes the songs, Shona sings them and Andrew records them. Added to the mix are strings, accordion, piano, oboe and percussion.

Shona MacDonald has sung in places as disparate as Cuba, the United States and Switzerland, as well as performing more regularly throughout Scotland. She has worked, and featured on albums, with Maire Brennan of Clannad, Dave Bainbridge, David Fitzgerald and Rhett Tyler among others. Shona has sung at several festivals, including the Edinburgh Festival, Celtic Connections and the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Allan MacDonald is a painter, exhibiting regularly in Scotland and in London. The songs that he writes reflect much of what he displays in his paintings. What Allan does on his own with paints, he does here as part of a musical collaboration, the themes that lie just beneath the surface in his oils are unambiguously articulated here and given room to expand.

Andrew Howie has been writing and recording music for over 10 years, mostly under the name Calamateur. His music has been likened to The Blue Nile, Sparklehorse and Elliott Smith. Andrew’s songs have been given airplay by John Peel, Radio 3's Late Junction and Radio Scotland's Vic Galloway. As a Trufflehunter his recording and production give unexpected settings to Shona & Allan's stunning & beautiful songs, giving them even more of a chance to shine. Signs of Life is his 8th release and 4th full-length studio album.

Behind the band's material lies a variety of musical influences, perhaps the most unusual being unaccompanied Psalm singing, from which grew a love of harmony and an understanding of the value of the lyric. This body of work has distilled slowly over a few years and has eventually been uncorked in this collection of songs.