Bristol-based artist Fenne Lily has shared a live session of her second LP BREACH which came out last year via Dead Oceans. LOCKDOWN LIVE is premiering now on Fenne’s YouTube.
Filmed at The Loco Klub in Bristol last year, the performance is an intimate, socially-distant run through seven tracks from BREACH as well as the single Hypochondriac.
The session was directed by Crack Magazine’s Benjamin Brook and is creatively informed by the BREACH tracklist with Fenne’s personal belongings and ephemera scattered across The Loco Klub’s tunnel. “I wanted to represent every song as if it was a character in a film.” Fenne told us over the phone. “I wanted to remind myself of all of the elements that made up this body of work and a lot of that was done through the objects. I also wrote this in my bedroom on the floor, I almost wanted to recreate that space. It was like a housewarming party… but the house is the record.”
The album came out in September of last year and all plans to tour it were cancelled due to the pandemic. For Fenne, this was especially disappointing as BREACH was a project born out of live performance and close collaboration with her band. “I wrote this whole album with the intention of playing it live because we tracked it all live and I collected musicians who I trust and love. But we couldn’t do it.”
Rather than stripping arrangements back for a pared-down live session, Fenne brought the band together and performed them as they were fully intended, and how they came to be. “I wanted to show how the songs became the recorded version – we worked out how we wanted the album to sound through touring and playing so we wanted to show that with this show.”
LOCKDOWN LIVE brings BREACH to life with an informal, loose atmosphere – Fenne’s trusted band (drummer James Luxton, bassist Kane Eagle and guitarist Joe Sherrin) performing at a custom-decorated space in her home city.
“It felt celebratory. There’s a really exciting impermanence to playing something live and not knowing exactly how it’s going to go. We had a run-through, shot and it had a deadline. We weren’t able to be too precious in the way you can with a recorded piece. It mirrored the impermanence of a live show. We were all quite drunk as well, there was a fishbowl of WKD.”
Watch the full session now in the player above. Fenne’s also dropped some new merch to celebrate which you can check out here.
