Based in London, emerging alternative musician Silverhours returns with his second single ‘Sad Letter’ from the upcoming LP, Madeleine Moment. The song is inspired by Haruki Murakami novels and Korean movies. ‘Sad Letter’ started from the simple guitar arpeggio, which was produced to sound like an old vinyl record.
“‘Sad Letter’ is one of my personal favourites. It is about inner beauty and emptiness, the power of the moment, and deep memories of the past.” Silverhours
The song’s arrangement involves a cinematic strings soundscape inspired by works of Henryk Górecki and film scores by Jonny Greenwood. The programmed strings are blended with a Cello part, which was performed by Clare O’Connell, a very talented cellist, who played on the Radiohead and the Smile records. Other collaborators include Clive Deamer (Portishead, Radiohead) who played the drums, and Timothy Lefebrve (David Bowie) on the bass guitar.
When the track was almost ready to be sent to his mixing engineer, Silverhours still felt it was missing something. By complete chance he just happened that day to be listening to 'Sketches of Spain’ by Miles Davis and realised that trumpet was that missing element. He came across Joe Auckland, who played trumpet with the likes of Mumford and Sons and The Pet Shop Boys, and he helped him with an expressive trumpet solo in the coda section.
"The sound concept was to make this song sound like one of the dusty records found on a record fair, a bit warble, lo-fi soundtrack for the movie that never existed."