[Editor’s Note: I’ve got something a little bit different and very special for you today. The below words are all by Sophie Hutchings written to accompany the many photographs that she has also furnished. It’s less of an interview and more of a visual piece on isolation. You can also treat it as an accompaniment to her latest solo piano release, Echoes In the Valley, which comes out on October 29th on Mercury KX – in fact, I highly recommend that you come back here once again (after the release date) and play it in the background as you re-read these words. It sets the mood and brings this setting into your very own space.]
For Echoes In the Valley, I wanted to find a place that represented the relationship between beauty and isolation. To collaborate with the natural surroundings and to find solace in simplicity hence the idea of staying in this remote and beautiful area with a very organic and simple approach yet allow what I felt inside to be carried by the atmosphere I had cloistered myself away into…
If I’m not making music I’m always listening to music… There’s never really a moment around my place when I don’t have music playing… Being out in natural open terrains is the one place I never listen to music… Especially if I’m say camping or the like… I thrive off the silence and nature’s own voice… My brain is pretty active and I find that the more challenging the terrain, the further away from civilization, the more my mind just focuses on that one thing and it rejuvenates my creativity…
The ocean is a kind of medicine for me… I think it is for a lot of people…. It’s my form of meditation whereby I’m not cluttering my headspace rather I’m simply focusing on the ocean and my surroundings…
This is a place my Dad used to take us camping a lot. It’s one of my favourite pockets of the world… What I love about this southern coastline is all the adjoining beaches can only be accessed by foot so you can go for these endless walks and not bump into a single soul… Each beach weaves in and out of coastal forests with bush tracks to the next beach and then to the next and so on… Even though one of my most favourite things is to travel abroad and culturally discover, I do love returning to a familiar place. I often return here, it’s a place I’ve been coming to since childhood simply to surf, to walk, to read out in the open, listen to the wildlife croon, sit by the fire at night, and hang out with the Black Cockatoos and Kangaroos…
Vertical cliffs and headlands feature prominently on the coast of where I live. This is my local morning joint. A colossal rock formation that goes all the way around the headland. A tucked-away corner where I often come to gaze out at the ocean and if I’m not in the ocean I’ll do laps of this gorgeous mostly natural rockpool that juts right out amongst the rocks. Not many people come here and I often have it to myself…
This is a saltwater lagoon near my place that has a bike track going around it… It makes for a really lovely bike ride late afternoon as the sun goes down… I took this after I got stuck in a storm and then the sun and rainbow came out to glimmer…
This is one of the local rain forests in the nearby district where I recorded ‘Echoes In The Valley’… Heading away from the east coast up into the hills to the west where there are plenty of freshwater swimming holes and waterfalls which was great as it was around 30 degrees whilst recording… So it was a refreshing dip!
This is outside my room on the property where I was recording ‘Echoes In The Valley’… I loved sitting here after a day at the piano to watch the sun go down over the valley, absorb the natural surroundings and listen to the cacophony of bird songs, crickets, and frogs… There wasn’t really anything else which is what I adored about it…
If you head east away from the mountainous valley where I was recording you’ll find long stretches of coastline… You can see it from the top of the valley also… There’s a lot of coastlines so you can easily find secluded spots where you can share the sand with wildlife more than humans.
One of my favourite regular camp spots… I find the endless stretches of coastline quite therapeutic and often go for long bike rides or walks when I’m in this area…
