Samana are a psychedelic-folk duo from rural Wales whose cinematic soundscapes bear comparison to Irish experimentalists Lankum.

Would you call this folk music? You might do, if only for want of another label, but it’s far too facile a label for the all-enveloping soundscapes of Samana.

Like a Welsh equivalent of Ireland’s experimental group Lankum – or their even more experimental offshoot ØXN – Samana use folk music as a starting point and inspiration but take it into new places.

The duo Samana – Rebecca Rose Harris and Franklin Mockett – craft their shamanic music deep in rural Wales, exploring timeworn themes of love, loss and the unseen, reflecting the rugged beauty of the landscape in their sound. 

As the ancient Sanskrit term samana reveals, their music deals with the ways of one “who abandons the conventional obligations of social life in order to find a way of life more in tune with the ways of nature.”

Combining elements of slowcore and blues, their wild cinematic creations can come laden with gothic strings, synthesizers and electric guitars.  This tune, The Knife, slashes as dangerously as its title in a second half that’s loud, harsh and intense; and anything but traditional folk music.

Electric guitar shatters the senses while drums crash and a synthesizer crawls under the skin as Rebecca Rose Harris sings:  “To bury the speech deep inside of me/ Drains the sound from my mouth.”