Tresor (Treasure) is Gwenno Saunders' third full-length solo album, composed in St. Ives, Cornwall, shortly before the Covid lockdowns of 2020. The album was completed at home in Cardiff during the pandemic with her co-producer and musical partner, Rhys Edwards, and it's also her second album almost entirely in Cornish (Kernewek).
The title track explores the ambiguities that come with with visibility as a woman and the difficulty of utilizing women's power.
About the track and video Gwenno says: “'Tresor' is a song questioning what makes us human, and the conscious choice that we have to either have a positive or negative impact on our environment and everything around us. We live in a chaotic world and what impacts on our ability to make positive decisions is largely circumstantial, the song is about trying to connect with our ability to do the right thing at a point where everything is in-flux, in crisis, and the foundation of our society is changing. How do we connect with our responsibilities and instinct to commit to the collective in a largely individualistic society? 'Tresor' is an homage to an older, analog world, the soundtracks to European cinema, and a final fair farewell to the 20th Century.”
Gwenno's expanding interest in cinema and the interplay between music and visuals is expressed in the video, which is influenced by surrealist directors such as Sergei Parajanov, Agnes Varda, and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Tresor, shot in Wales and Cornwall, depicts a dream state from some other era, whimsical and seductive, and rich with light and color.
Gwenno continues: “The video is a scrapbook of sorts, these are moments that I've filmed over the past couple of years — my week recording in St Ives in 2020, our first lockdown at home in 2021, some Super8 clips from the Tresor film shot by Clare Marie Bailey. It stars my good friends Edward Rowe (Bait, The Witcher) and Pinar Ögün (Keeping Faith, Fflam) as Anima and Animus, and I've edited it to reflect the collage approach that I take to writing music, and to Rhys Edwards and mine’s recording process. We record everything at home, without the time-restrictions of studios and session musicians, it's a very DIY approach and I think that this video reflects that honestly.”
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Gwenno
Film directed, edited & produced by Gwenno
Heavenly Recordings
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