Thursday 24 August 2017

New Music: Hannah Peel - Archid Orange Dwarf


One of the greatest things about music is that, as a listener, every time you feel that the sonic train has come to the end of the line and hit the buffers, with every last idea used up and spent, there’s always another platform with another train waiting to take you on a further journey of infinite discovery. Sometimes the new journey won’t even be by the same form of transport. Maybe next time it will be by sea or road or even into space, such are the endless possibilities.

Hannah Peel is one of those extraordinary artists who is exploring those possibilities, her forthcoming third album Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia creating parallels between the human brain and space. 

For this record Hannah undertook research spanning from conversations between the public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, Marek Kukula, and extensive reading of books on theoretical physics, as well as memoirs on dreams. Writing a song about being ‘in da club’ or ‘be what you wanna be’ for Spotify playlist maximisation is not what Hannah Peel is about. This is music with intelligence, thought and a graceful complexity behind it; and as we go with her on that journey Peel confirms that no matter where we travel to and what we discover, ‘we are all creatures of the land’ (A Land, Jacquetta Hawkes, 1951), and that “…in all that immensity of black holes, supernovas, galaxies, nebulae, the most astonishing and the most complex natural object we have discovered in the entire universe is right here on earth, it’s in our heads, it’s the human brain” (Marek Kukula, May 2017).

Archid Orange Dwarf is the second song to be taken as a single from the album (the first Sunrise Through The Dusty Nebula I featured here). It’s a hugely evocative instrumental piece that combines analogue synths and brass with startling effect and gives reason to quietly start whispering the words masterpiece as you step into Hannah's rocket to fly. Just beautiful.

Hannah Peel - Archid Orange Dwarf


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