Precious Bane by Jim White and Trey Blake

It started in London with a shy fan offering Americana outsider Jim White a gift—an obscure 19th Century novel called Precious Bane. Over the years they kept up a correspondence, with White becoming increasingly intrigued by this shy, impoverished woman who led a fairly desperate hand to mouth existence in the south of England.

That woman is Trey Blake, a neurodivergent artist living in obscurity in Brighton, UK. Growing up with undiagnosed autism, she managed her condition and the resultant inability to function in the mainstream world through various addictions. Along the way she sought to create art (songs, prose & photography) that encompassed both light and dark, drawing on her experiences of brokenness and loss on one hand and transcendent beauty and oneness on the other.

The two have paired up to deliver Precious Bane, a haunting effort that finds them trading songs from across the ocean---her parts being recorded by Joe Watson of Stereolab, whom Trey randomly met in a Brighton coffee shop. Like Jim, Joe was instantly struck by this exotic outsider. The resulting collaboration is an enigmatic sonic journey that transports the listener to a mythic, darkly lyrical soundscape.

Jim White and Joe Watson believe in Trey Blake. Hopefully you will too. She deserves an audience, a high-minded one in fact, one hungry for subtle revelation, one capable of appreciating the beauty of treasures unearthed in ragged, unlikely places; among the weeds, deep in the shadows of being, on the outermost fringes of existence. That’s Trey’s zone.

He's that erstwhile druggie, drifting, storytelling, taxi-driving, recovering Pentecostal maverick talent from Pensacola, Florida who took sadcore outer-space alt.country by storm.

"From the splinter in the hand, to the thorn in the heart

to the shotgun to the head

you got no choice but to learn to glean solace from pain

or you’ll end up cynical or dead."