Green Awakening

The Emerald Dawn have placed the climate emergency at the centre of their sixth album, The Land, The Sea, The Air. Ally Carter and Tree Stewart tell Prog how the first volume of this ambitious two-album set came together and how a new-found love of fusion has bolstered their sound.

- Stephen Lambe

Even within a genre of music as diverse as prog, The Emerald Dawn are unique. Formed in 2010 by Ally Carter and Tree Stewart, the band have gradually built a following that finds them on the eve of the release of their sixth album and playing to an increasingly devoted audience. When Prog speaks to Carter and Stewart, the duo who remain at the heart of The Emerald Dawn, they are just back from an appearance at the prestigious A New Day festival in Kent. But, by contrast and in typically modest fashion, they've also just played live to an audience of zero.

"When we release an album, we play the whole thing live in the studio with cameras set up," says Carter. "Then, Tree has the terrible job of putting all the footage together. So we had a run-through today just to check that the technology works. We use 16 channels in our recording software, Logic, and hope that nobody was inaudible. Today we performed one of the new tracks to make sure all the levels were right and the cameras were picking everything up, then next week we'll probably do the actual recording, which won't go out on YouTube until the time of release."

Their latest album The Land, The Sea, The Air, is to be released in two parts: the first has just come out and the second is due next spring, with a double vinyl version combining both releases to follow. While there's always been an environmental flavour to The Emerald Dawn's music – Carter served on the board of Friends Of The Earth Scotland for some years – this is the first album to tackle such subject matter head on. The guitarist explains that the subject matter has long been on the agenda.

"I've wanted to do this album for quite a while, but the rest of the band kept putting it further back on the list until finally I said, 'No we've got to do it now.'"

Stewart says there's been shift in thinking within the rest of the band, too.