Leathan Milne is a BC based songwriter whose songs feature lush string arrangements and ambient textures, while sitting on a solid foundation of traditional folk music.
Milne’s newest record There Is The Ground Beneath Us, is soaring and definitive, carrying the listener, from start to finish. His second self-produced and recorded album, Milne draws listeners in close, with his careful lyrics and thoughtful arrangements.
The album is uplifting, a meditation on the past as a means to transcend. Milne says “Although I don't think of it as a dark record, lots of the songs have an underlying theme of death and the passage of time. It wasn't something that I intentionally set out to explore, but as I looked back on the writing it was obviously something that my subconscious needed to scrutinize.”
Love, and all its embodiment's, are a hopeful and quiet presence throughout the record. In the title track Milne writes: “There is the sky above / Where few men dare to run / And when they start to fall below / You pull them up like helium.”
Country tinged songs like ‘Our Ghosts’ and ‘To Keep Around’ add momentum among the moodier songs that transition sometimes seamlessly between arrangements, as well as nod to Milne’s upbringing in the Canadian foothills.
The concise storytelling of songs like ‘Santa Fe’ and ‘That’s What I Was Thinking’ show Milne emerging alongside a generation of songwriters whose traditional folk songwriting is impeccable, but whose addition of modern arranging serve only to enhance their delivery. Being heavily influenced by ambient music pioneers Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, Milne skilfully weaves the world of traditional folk music with more experimental sounds.
Twelve years after the release of his first record The Outcome Of Weather (2011), Milne continues to tour across Canada and the US with his own project, and as a busy and sought after guitar player.