james lloyd smith

Lake Walk is the first single from my upcoming album… the Pre-save link is in my bio! 🌲

Blending melancholic introspection with uplifting melodies and instrumentation, Lake Walk reflects on the relationship between the external and internal – how a simple walk around the lake can quiet personal anxieties, and how the natural environment restores perspective.

I wrote Lake Walk whilst working on the operations team at Hever Castle & Gardens, where my end-of-day site lock-up routine would involve a solitary walk around the lake to check for visitors. In all weathers, these walks became a source of calm and reflection, shaping the essence of the song’s atmosphere.

Self-recorded and produced, the track captures this serene yet powerful connection between nature and the mind.

'Lake Walk' will be released later this month. This will be the first single from a project I've been working on for a very long time. 🌲

#indiefolk #lofi #freakfolk #baroquepop

I started recording this album four and a half years ago!

When I started I had just released my first album (a weird lo-fi indie folk experimental project), I had no money following a train trip round europe and I was in a bit of a directionless existential crisis flavoured period of my life.

With this album I wanted to create a vast sprawling indie folk/baroque pop concept album. Thematically I wanted to incorporate transcendentalism and nature writing with personal introspective songwriting.

I had a general sense this album should have it’s own internal recognisable world. As if the album didn’t belong in the real world but a slightly abstract mysterious one.

It’s been a pretty tumultuous time, personally and globally in the years that I’ve recorded this album. I think some of that has definitely seeped into the album’s makeup but I’ve tried not to be too on the nose with that stuff as I think that taints the concept a little.

Alongside making the album I worked endless shifts at a historic heritage park which ended up greatly influencing many songs on the album...I’ll talk more about this in another post