MUSIC
SEPT. 9 2025
NEW SINGLE
This is the first song from my new upcoming album “The Lighthouse”, which will be released on January 23, 2026.
When I wrote this song we were staying in a family home in the French countryside, a stone’s throw from the village graveyard. It was a particularly freezing and misty week, and there was a spookiness in the air.
I was curled up on the sofa with my guitar, staring into the log fire we relied on to keep us warm. Lost in thought…
and “The Bricks that Make the Building” poured out.
A song about ancestry. The passing of the torch. The gifting of time. I was raised by two lesbian mothers and lost one of them when I was a young teenager. So it makes sense that the concept of mortality and what we leave behind has always loomed large in my life. The lyrics are written from two perspectives - the perspective of a spirit, visiting their old home and watching the next generation going about their evening. And the perspective of the child, considering their heritage. As I was that night on the sofa.
Happy listening. Share it with somebody you love if you like it. Have a beautiful day.
Credits: Written by Tessa Rose Jackson & Darius Timmer Produced by Tessa Rose Jackson & Darius Timmer Vocals, Acoustic Guitar - Tessa Rose Jackson Keys - Darius Timmer Backing Vocals - Hattie Whitehead, Darius Timmer Flute textures - Perrine Feriol Executive Lyric Advisor - Benjamin Longman Engineered by Johannes Buff Mixed by Darius Timmer Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studio
Jan 17, 2025
COLLABORATION EP
This is a collection of songs that truly symbolise creative freedom and joy. A celebration of songwriting and how it can be a powerful form of therapy, especially when you can share it with others in collaboration. As the EP title suggests, in a world that feels more and more disparate and divided, sometimes it takes an exchange of thoughts, insecurities and melodies to realise that we are in fact not alone. It’s okay. We all need a mirror sometimes.
Thank you to all the wonderful artists that collaborated with me to make this EP.
TRACKLISTING & LYRICS
The Boulder (with the Shells) —(Lyrics)
Shadow Song (with Nana Adjoa) — (Lyrics)
Hell or High Water (with Benjamin Longman) —(Lyrics)
Anti-hero (with Franklin Mansion) — (Lyrics)
Stick in the Mud (with the Shells) — (Lyrics)
Sad Duet (with Caoilian Sherlock) — (Lyrics)
The Antidote (with Noon Garden) — (Lyrics)
CREDITS
ADDITIONAL MUSICIANS: Dan Huijser, Viktor van Woudenberg, Floris van der Vlugt, Steely Dave STRINGS: Phoebe Snelling, James Cullen, Romana Szczepaniak, Coco Inman, Evie Hilyer-Ziegler, Valentin Pinero, Helen Sanders-Hewett, Samuel Rowe, Fraser Bowles, Katt Newlon MIX: Darius Timmer MASTER: Mike Hillier
VIDEOS
ALBUM
FEB 3, 2023
“OWLS”
“Owls” started out as a story that I wrote while my partner Darius and I were roadtripping through America - from New Orleans to Memphis and ultimately to Nashville. We had the radio on the whole time and it was mesmerising to hear the music slowly morph between genres as we drove. At the same time, we were deep into David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" which made our experiences of the small-town America we explored on the way even more bewitching. All these new impressions, local stories and overwhelming scenery culminated in a story taking shape in my head. It was about love and loss, intimacy and secrets, and the shadowland between dreams and reality. In fact, when we arrived home I sat down and wrote a full screenplay for "Owls", aiming for it to become a surrealistic, indie musical film.
But I quickly realised I couldn't wait the average 7 years it takes for a film project to be made to share the music with the world. And so, I decided to focus on the songs and the sounds, allowing the narrative that inspired it to be more of an undertone, a conceptual backbone for the songs to rest upon.
More than ever, Darius and I dove into creating as rich a production style as possible on this album and many of our close friends lend their musicianship to these songs. We have Floris van der Vlugt on (bass) clarinet and saxophone, Kevin van Moorsel on ethereal electric guitar, my dear friends Aysha de Groot, Simone van Vugt and Fleur Stam belting out the chorus of "I Guess I'm Changing" along with me... and that's only naming a few.
A lot of our production choices were aimed to infuse each track with a sense of location and context. "Only Brokenhearted" is played in a semi-deserted local bar, on a tinsel-lined stage with a musty smell of tobacco and heartache in the air. "All Time Low" takes place in a solitary bedroom, with moonlight pouring in through a dusty window.
On our road trip we made a lot of field recordings and used these to weave the album together into one long journey. I hope the album feels like an adventure to you as much as it does to us and that it inspires your own version of the story.
SPECIAL ART FEATURE - PHENAKISTOSCOPES
For the "Owls" vinyl, I wanted to create an extra art feature. Something that would give a little hint as to the strange, surrealistic scenes that I still see in my head when I hear the album. And so, I created 11 phenakistoscopes that are included in the "Owls" LP packaging. These are animation disks, that will start to move in front of your eyes when spun on a turntable at 45 rpm. All you need to make this work is my free custom stroboscope app installed on your phone and a darkened room. Click the link below to learn more about how this works and watch a quick video I made demonstrating this absolutely mad technique. It is basically... magic. And some maths. But mostly magic.
‘SHAPESHIFTER’
Written and recorded almost all during lockdown, this album was literally a lifeline for me when all else stopped. And so I poured everything into it, all of the frustration and the love and the missing and the hope. Darius and I worked on it day and night, cycling to our studio before curfew at 9pm and then heading home again after curfew ended at 4.30am. Days turned into nights… this was our reality. It feels so strange and so wonderful to share this time capsule with you. I hope you like it.
