Sano Hill is a singer-songwriter based in Galway (Ireland) currently recording his debut album. His songs are inspired by life, love and loss and he has played to audiences in the US and Ireland with his work released already to critical acclaim on compilation albums, including ‘Origin: See the Light’, ‘New Horizons’, and ‘Inundations’ (which also featured music from leading international acts, including Josh Ritter, Ron Sexsmith, Lloyd Cole, Damien Rice, Mundy and The Frames).
“The Climb” – available to stream or download since Jan. 28 – is his first single release from his forthcoming debut album, recorded in the legendary Windmill Lane Studios (Dublin) in collaboration with award-winning producer Larry Hogan.
He “is blessed with a strong and distinctive voice” (Galway Advertiser) and his work has been described as defining “a timeless recipe for original guitar music: inventive, humanist lyrics sung from the gut, then embedded in rhythms to barrage or soothe the soul” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). For leading Irish music magazine, Hot Press, Sano Hill daringly “tries to capture the sound, sense and smell of Galway in a similar vein to Van Morrison’s finest compositions about his native Belfast.” (Hot Press).
“The Climb” is a song for our time. As we attempt to come to terms with the greatest health emergency faced in living memory and face the uncertain future that climate change brings, “The Climb” is a song inspired by this uncertainty and related anxieties but celebrating the possibility that we can overcome, that we can climb that hill (whatever it may be) and come together to celebrate our shared humanity.
The song is also partly informed by the work of visionary poet and painter William Blake (whose extraordinary artwork is featured throughout the music video), who also lived through a time of huge change and uncertainty in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.