Basset - In the Clay (2022)

We’re Sam Clark and Yasmine Shelton. Together we are the folk-duo Basset. We call Toronto home, and this gritty, massive, in-your-face, messy place is woven deep into the music we create. Through fiddle and intricate harmonies, our voices wrap around each other and evoke the rawness of this city.

Our lead single, “In the Clay,” is from our forthcoming debut full-length album and is an account of our experience living in a big city yet feeling isolated for two years. We came far, we still managed to grow in the dark, but it was very heavy.

This album was conceived in isolation. We felt very tucked away underground, and we couldn’t go anywhere aside from the long, long walks we took through the west end of the city. It was easy to feel trapped in the monotony, the rhythms we repeated each day; especially underground, where the lack of sunlight was crushing. This got morbidly fascinating. Maybe to distract ourselves, we fell into some rhythms of really intense work, trying to shape ourselves into the musicians – and humans – we wanted to be, to create this album.

We practiced hard, we studied, and we pushed our bodies too. We ate less and worked out. At times, we ate too little and worked ourselves too hard. We constantly chased after light, on long walks on the coldest day of the winter, our “happy lamps” and “grow lights.” All these, perhaps, were ways of trying to make something of being trapped in that basement and the trials that everyone faced for the past few years.