An ACoRN drop...and a Tasmin Archer Q&A
It's that time of the year, at least here in New England, when acorns start to fall. That makes it all the more appropriate that Tasmin Archer's new album, A Cauldron of Random Notes, comes out today. After all, its acronym is ACoRN.
If you're a fan of Tasmin's music, you have waited a long time for this day. Almost exactly 19 years ago, she released her third full-length album On. Once she was finished with promoting On, Tasmin and her partner John Hughes focused on acclimatizing themselves to their home studio and writing music—lots and lots of music. Just as they were in the process of selecting songs for her fourth album, COVID stalled their progress.
Eventually, Tasmin and John were able to re-start the process of narrowing down the list of songs from those they had written and finishing them off for a new album. At long last, we can hear the results of their efforts on ACoRN.
If you have yet to listen to ACoRN, you can stream it here or on any of the major platforms, or you can buy the vinyl or CD here. It's a gorgeous, wonderful album. I know I'll have it in heavy rotation for the rest of 2025, and probably longer.
I got to talk to Tasmin about ACoRN a year ago for Ep 161 of YMAAA. She shared some of the details of the events leading up to the album, and we talked about a couple of the tracks. However, since the album was yet to be released, I could not include any clips for you to hear. And because the focus of that episode was Daniel Lanois' 2003 album Shine, we spent only a small portion of the show talking about ACoRN.
Tasmin has been gracious enough to return to YMAAA to do another episode, this time focusing on ACoRN. In addition to talking about her album, she will be answering your questions! We will be recording this episode in a couple of weeks, so in the meantime, I am gathering up any questions you have for Tasmin. They can be about ACoRN, any of her other work—including "Sleeping Satellite"—or her experiences as an independent recording artist.
If you have a question for Tasmin to answer on the episode, you can leave it here in the comments or you can send it to me by replying to this post via email. Can't wait to hear your questions and Tasmin's responses!