Courtney Werner – “sierra one whiskey eight”

Tritium Forests is the first solo album from Courtney Werner, songwriter and fiddle player for RSTB favorites Magic Tuber Stringband. The album works as a companion piece to MTSB’s record from earlier in the year, also focusing on Werner’s work with the nuclear exclusion zone that surrounds the Savannah River Site near her home in South Carolina. The irradiated site, and its flora and fauna, have been offered as natural buffers for the contamination; a sacrifice deemed necessary by the very powers that allowed the damage. Courtney spent time recording the area and processing the field recordings alongside string improvisations that sought to interpret and immerse themselves into the environments on tape. The contemplative pieces here are a reminder of what’s deemed expendable in the name of progress, an all too prescient notion as public lands are opened up to extraction, data centers drain waterways, and de-regulation threatens to repeat these kinds of old mistakes. Werner’s new record is out February 25th from Thrill Jockey.

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