T.R.Burge has lived in Canada. That alone gives me a good reason to like this album since I have lived in Canada for many years. Given his musical skills, I would suspect him living in one or the other of Canada’s metropolis music magnets, Vancouver on the west coast and Toronto servicing the rest. He has lived in Australia, Canada, Scotland, Siberia and England and is heavily influenced by his past experiences and travelling in his songwriting and style of playing. He studied old-style blues guitar in Sydney and spent some time in a Soviet-style music institute in Siberia, teaching children to speak English there.
For seven years, he lived in Australia, and when not playing in Auzzy bands there, he was in the outback talking to rural guys and miners about beer, no not just for fun; that was his job.
Over the past years, T.R.Burge has been based between Berlin and Manchester, playing in bands and again collaborating with other musicians. His solo releases are a product of this time, the people he’s met, and the stories he’s gathered along the way.
Ah, the stories. The stories that T.R. can tell us. Stories that run the gamut from the call for freedom in the opening track, Free Man, to Precious Stones, a song that T.R. tells us references a dream he had. Precious Stones is about aiming for the best in life and has mystical aspects.
I love the soft guitar licks that T. R. lays down, most evidently in the openings to the first two tracks, Free Man and Japanese Rain. In Japanese Rain, T.R. tells us that it “relates to a trip I took to Japan pre-Covid and what seemed like an endless night of adventures and experiences.”)
Selling You – Single – “Selling You is a song that was inspired by a particular experience whilst playing in a punk ethos band in Leeds. We had a permanent practice room above a bar in the city centre, this room was covered in cobwebs and had an old stage at one end of it, there was also a secret meeting room where the national front had met up in the 80s, it had a strange vibe, we also played in the bar downstairs at weekends, there was both light and dark experiences during that time.”
Selling You: Video, “The video for Selling You, was shot on location in Berlin; the emotional sentiment of the song felt very appropriate for Berlin, and it’s a place where I have spent a great deal of time in the last few years. The narrative in the video represents the underlying story which inspired the song. The director Emily Hagan did a great job; she lives in Berlin but is from Manchester and has done videos for band members of New Order and Johnny Marr, amongst other things.”
Selling You is probably my favourite track, followed by the strong closing notes of Ride This Rail (A hopeful lament for people to take it easy on themselves and keep pushing through, we can be so focused on getting things done and forget to take in the ride.)
Selling You is a well-crafted E.P., but I was left wanting more at the end, so I listened to T.R.s previous E.P. God Ache and then put on Selling You again; problem solved, I could hear more T.R. Burge. If you want to hear more music by T.R. Burge, please follow these links.
https://soundcloud.com/user-356971216https://trburge.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChanrbBLPWb99Vg9kusadVA
https://www.instagram.com/trburgemusic/
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