Tis Lake (Tissø in Danish ) in western Zealand was, according to Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology, formed after a malicious troll tried to submerge a village by enclosing an entire lake in a letter. The letter was not delivered to the village targeted but opened in Zealand instead .

Tissø Lake is also a recording project of Ian Humberstone (b. 09.06.86) from Exeter in the United Kingdom. Ian’s latest album (his third) is called Song of the Black Dog.

I remember an essay by the late psychiatrist Anthony Storr which said that ‘Black Dog’ was Winston Churchill’s own nickname for the prolonged and recurrent fits of depression he suffered from. I’m not sure if Ian Humberstone intends the same connection. His pastoral folk songs certainly do have an air of introverted melancholy although I would call them reflective rather than depressive.

Words like ‘somnolent slumber’ and ‘silent refrains‘ are woven into what is currently my favourite track on the album – The House by the River – which begins with the line:”The most beautiful place in Cambridge Town is by the river where the house burnt down”
Later he refers to Grantchester Meadows ,the setting for a song on Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma (see pictured). This link seems appropriate since something of Ian’s fragile, tentative vocal delivery echoes that of Syd Barrett’s.

Ian’s lyrics are poetically detached but they exude a warmth and offer a highly personal perspective on the world.

A press release from Mathilde Records puts it well when they describe the music of Tissø Lake as offering “the secret comforts of isolated worlds….. at almost total odds with modernity“

On the closing track ‘Heath Fire and Waltz’ Ian sings of music for collective pleasure though “not for groups of more than 20“. He’s probably right. It’s easier to imagine them performed to a rapt audience in a small back room than to an unruly crowd in a club.

The track closes with the repeated refrain:
“Please waltz at my show – it is hard to do but it is rewarding“.
For the moment I’m content to sway along to his music in the privacy of my own home