HANNAH PEEL & PARAORCHESTRA
SHARE NEW SINGLE & VIDEO
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR WE ARE PART MINERAL
TAKEN FROM THEIR ALBUM, THE UNFOLDING, OUT 1 APRIL
ON REAL WORLD RECORDS
LIVE PERFORMANCES - 2022
ASSEMBLY ROOMS - EDINBURGH
SAGE - GATESHEAD
BARBICAN - LONDON
BLUE DOT FESTIVAL - JODRELL BANK
Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra today share a new single, ‘We Are Part Mineral’, the latest to be taken from their major new work, The Unfolding. The eight-track album is set for release on 1 April 2022 via Real World Records - on CD, double vinyl and double vinyl Dinked Edition: https://smarturl.it/RW241
The video for ‘We Are Part Mineral’ was created by Stefan Goodchild (Triple Geek), who once again has woven incredible new worlds for the track to inhabit, using Barnbrook’s totems from the album artwork as inspiration. The track begins with a chorus of ambient voices before it pummels, twists and turns - each movement reflected by the twisting of elements.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/PJb4q5-YRv8
Hannah Peel explains, “From collaborating with the Paraorchestra, to the artwork with Jonathan Barnbook which in turn inspired this visual art by the director Stefan Goodchild, the shapes and forms of the original music have taken on new identities. There's a sense of deep rooted humanity - that our time here on earth is short and we will never fully hear the rocks sing, as they shift over millennia.”
Peel took inspiration from Robert Macfarlane’s book Underland, an exploration of deep time and the underworld, and Macfarlane - in response to ‘We Are Part Mineral’ - recently wrote, “Here is the geological human body taking form, with its calcified bones, its teeth-reefs: building itself chemically, determinedly, awesomely, from the sheer matter of the young world. It was mineralisation that allowed us to become upright, generating skeletons that might bear us, muscles that might move us, and as I listened, I found myself unconsciously leaning forwards: moving, moved.”
The Unfolding is an extraordinary eight-part collaboration between Mercury and Emmy nominated Northern Irish composer Hannah Peel and Bristol’s Paraorchestra, recorded in precious morsels of time around the global pandemic. There are pieces of music that seek to tell us deeper stories. Others harness the talents of the players at their disposal in adventurous ways. Then there are the rare, generous works that make us think back to our roots as human beings and to our shared beginnings in the universe, that lift us in their melodies, rhythms and textures, that carry us with them. The Unfolding is all of these things.
The Unfolding also explores Paraorchestra’s progressive idea of what an orchestra should be, mixing analogue, digital and assistive instruments with a unique ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians to make magic happen.
The collaboration’s roots go back when Paraorchestra’s Artistic Director, Charles Hazlewood, met Peel to ask if she’d consider writing for them. Charles Hazelwood says: “It’s been an amazing journey, collaborating on this album with Hannah. The opportunity to bring together Hannah’s amazing skills as a composer with the extraordinary talents of our Paraorchestra’s musicians, and allow it to evolve gradually and naturally as we navigated the restrictions of the pandemic, means that we have created something incredibly new and organic.”
The Unfolding was recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire. The perfect place, Peel says, for The Unfolding to emerge, not only because the studios are accessible for all musicians, but also because they were “surrounded by nature… you step outside, and it's like life again.”
In that place and in these tracks, you can hear a composer and an orchestra exploring the idea of evolution in music – but you can also hear something else. You can also hear them evolving together, creating something new, and planting fresh roots from which the cycle of creativity can keep reviving itself.
“The Unfolding is almost a life form in itself”, Peel smiles, “taken from the muddy cells of the earth and taking flight into the air then returning to the elements. It’s like a character in itself. It’s a new way of seeing.”
The Unfolding by Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra is released on 1 April 2022 on Real World Records and is available to pre-order on CD, double vinyl, and double vinyl Dinked Edition now. Artwork is by Barnbrook.
Pre-order: https://smarturl.it/RW241
No comments:
Post a Comment