‘Free’, the second single from Storm Deva’s debut album, celebrates the arrival of spring.
“I wrote Free on a beautiful, sunny crisp spring morning,” says Storm Deva founding member Carollyn Eden, “It’s about the joy of life and the immense beauty of the natural world around us.”
She goes on to explain how the Sun that morning made the colours of nature so vibrant, and how the fresh breeze in the air carried the scent of blossom and new growth. “It all just felt intensely beautiful and joyous,” she says.
There was also an emotional weight to that morning, because it coincided with a moment of personal growth, which amplified the feelings of rebirth.
“The evening before, an inner story from my childhood, which I had carried through the years, suddenly made sense and it felt like a weight being lifted as I at last let it go,” she says.
These emotions are captured in the song’s subtle shifting between minor and major tonalities, and the arrangement of instruments.
“It took some time for us to get the arrangement right on this one,” says Storm Deva’s other founding member, Stuart Clark, “Carollyn had written such a beautiful song that the original piano demo was already emotionally complete, so the role of all the other instruments was to find ways to support what was already there, to enhance the piano and voice.”
The only places where the guitar could take more of a forward role was in the three instrumental passages. Yet even here, there was a delicate balance to be found between restraint and rapture.
“Stu’s response to the song with his beautiful guitar lines between the verses are moments of magic for me. The guitar is like a bird flying joyously in the beautiful spring sky,” says Carollyn.
For the video, Storm Deva again turned to award-winning film maker Neil Monaghan, whose music credits include Clive Nolan and Arena. Neil had provided Storm Deva with the dramatic video for their first single Alchemy, which told of a forbidding voyage into a magical inner landscape to overcome a dark, destructive force.
Next to this, Free stood in marked contrast – a fact that Neil recognised instantly. “When I first heard the song Free I was struck by its pastoral feel. The lyrics suggested a beautiful countryside with warm sunlight,” he says.
It was exactly the same imagery that Carollyn had in mind.
The video was shot over a couple of gloriously sunny days, moving from location to location and essentially running the song over and over again. “It’s always fun shooting when everyone is enthusiastic and having fun. We all wanted to shoot as much as we could to get as many options as possible for the edit. We used pretty much every minute of usable daylight.” says Neil.
Carollyn says, “Neil is such a wonderful film maker to work with. He is so positive and completely happy to let me just improvise each time the camera rolls. I love working this way, following my instinct in the moment and feeling completely free!”
Perhaps the highlight of the filming, both figuratively and literally, was the climb to the top of Pegsdon Hills in the Chilterns on the border between Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. Both filming days had been incredibly hot and the hike up to the top of that hill in the afternoon of the second day with all the heavy filming equipment required some extra strength reserves to be deployed.
“The celebration drink in the pub after the shoot was much needed!” Remembers Neil.
And the resulting video is exactly what all three were looking for, especially as a contrast to their first video. “After the technical complexity of Alchemy, which used a huge amount of CG and VFX it was literally ‘freeing’ to direct Free,” says Neil.
The single and video for Free will be released on all major streaming and social media channels 8 May 2024. You’ll be able to watch it here.
Storm Deva’s eponymously titled debut album, containing Free and Alchemy, is available for digital preview and purchase, as well as in gatefold digipack CD version with 16 page booklet over at Bandcamp.