Hannah Peel announces details of Fir Wave UK tour
HANNAH PEEL
FIR WAVE UK TOUR ANNOUNCED FOR AUTUMN
★★★★ Mojo ★★★★ The Skinny ★★★★ The Arts Desk ★★★★ Music OMH
8/10 Uncut 8/10 Clash 8/10 Loud And Quiet
PLUS BBC PROMS & KINGS PLACE PERFORMANCES THIS SUMMER
VINYL EDITION OF IVOR NOVELLO WINNING SCORE FOR THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS
OUT 26 MAY ON INVADA RECORDS
Ivor Novello award winning composer Hannah Peel has announced details of a long-awaited tour of her Mercury Music Prize nominated album, Fir Wave. Following a live premiere at Kings Place earlier this year, Peel will take the album The Observer described as “a gorgeous, fizzing record” on the road for a series of dates and festival appearances in September and October – full dates below.
2021’s album Fir Wave had unusual origins, Peel explains: “The specialist library label KPM, gave me permission to reinterpret the original music of the celebrated 1972 KPM 1000 series: Electrosonic, the music of Delia Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop.”
Her process of re-sampling and generating her own new digital instruments, allowing fresh inspiration in pioneering, experimental electronics from the early 1970s, is at the core of the album. On Fir Wave, Peel made connections and new patterns that mirror the Earth’s ecological cycles through music. Or as Elizabeth Alker (Unclassified BBC Radio 3) puts it: “The sound of nature’s internally evolving patterns and cycles, green shoots and roots wrapping themselves around vintage analogue effects and made to sound like a 21st Century arboretum rave”.
FIR WAVE LIVE
22 Sep – Nottingham, Metronome
23 Sep – Hidden Notes Festival, Stroud
26 Sep – Leeds, Belgrave Music Hall
27 Sep – Gateshead, Sage 2
28 Sep – Birkenhead, Future Yard
30 Sep – Bangor, Courthouse
1 Oct – Dublin, National Concert Hall
Hannah Peel will also perform at Kings Place on Friday 16 June, the latest show as part of her residency at the venue, collaborating with virtuosic percussionist Beibei Wang, and she will also take part in this year‘s BBC Proms on Sat 19 Aug with a special performance at Royal Albert Hall with the Manchester Collective, whose third album release, Neon (out on Bedroom Community on 23 June) features a collaboration with Peel.
Her original score for the Ivor Novello award winning The Midwich Cuckoos, created for Sky’s adaption of John Wyndham’s classic science novel of the same name is set to be released on vinyl, via Invada Records, on 26 May 2023: https://www.invada.co.uk/products/pre-sale-hannah-peel-the-midwich-cuckoos-original-score-vinyl
Written, performed and produced by Hannah Peel, the score is a unique and intricately produced sound world, working in harmony with the sound design of Sky’s adaptation. With analogue synthesisers recreating the horror of the ‘Hive Mind’, tape manipulations, drones, woodwind and melodies echoing the song of the cuckoo bird, Peel creates a score that perfectly balances the organic instrumentations and melodies, juxtaposed with an increasingly dark electronic ‘invasion’.
Peel goes on to explain, “Creating the score was a constant endeavour to find the balance between darkness and light, fear and beauty. It was a very fine and intricate equilibrium between the normal sunlit logical world as we know it, and a subversive unfamiliar musical language.”
The Midwich Cuckoos is an unnerving fable for our turbulent times, a thrilling strange and at times horrifying journey into parenthood. In this new adaptation, Midwich is a small English commuter town, liberal and aspirational, populated by families and affluent streets. A place where nothing much happens – that is until the twilight hours of a summer’s day when a sleepy corner of the town is plunged into panic: https://youtu.be/WCS4v711yck
Hannah Peel is a Northern Irish artist, composer, producer, broadcaster, regularly presenting on the BBC Radio 3 show, Night Tracks and Belfast Music Patron following its City of Music 2021 status by UNESCO. Often inspired by the connections between science and music, her recent recording career includes 2022’s work with the Paraorchestra, The Unfolding, which was recently nominated for an MPG award (for Self-Producing Artist); 2021’s Mercury Prize nominated Fir Wave; 2016’s Awake But Always Dreaming and Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia, scored for synthesisers and a 30 piece colliery brass band.
Peel composed and produced the soundtrack for ‘Game of Thrones: The Last Watch’ which earned her a 2019 Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score). In 2020 she created the soundtrack for BBC documentary, ‘Lee Miller – A Life On The Frontline’ and was awarded an MPG award for her soundtrack production on the 4-part Channel 5/Netflix TV thriller ‘The Deceived’. Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s Olivier Award-winning drama, is currently running at the National Theatre, with a new score by Peel.
2023 LIVE DATES
16 June – London, Kings Place – with Beibei Wang
19 Aug – London, Royal Albert Hall – BBC Proms with Manchester Collective
22 Sep – Nottingham, Metronome – Fir Wave
23 Sep – Hidden Notes Festival, Stroud – Fir Wave
26 Sep – Leeds, Belgrave Music Hall – Fir Wave
27 Sep – Gateshead, Sage 2 – Fir Wave
28 Sep – Birkenhead, Future Yard – Fir Wave
30 Sep – Bangor, Courthouse – Fir Wave
1 Oct – Dublin, National Concert Hall – Fir Wave
Tickets and further details: http://www.hannahpeel.com/live/
Listen to / buy The Midwich Cuckoos: https://www.invada.co.uk/products/pre-sale-hannah-peel-the-midwich-cuckoos-original-score-vinyl
RECENT PRAISE FOR THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS
“An eerie triumph” – Electronic Sound
“Like a nursery rhyme reimagined by John Carpenter” – Mark Kermode
“The drama also shows the importance of a distinctive score. Hannah Peel’s music is by turns warm, eerie and incredibly moving.” – Radio Times
“… another auspicious addition to Hannah Peel’s discography, revealing a powerfully dark aspect of her writing for the screen.” – Arcana
RECENT PRAISE FOR HANNAH PEEL & PARAORCHESTRA’S THE UNFOLDING
“…fresh and original” – MOJO
“… the scope of Hannah Peels’ latest genre-busting opus couldn’t be greater.” – UNCUT 8/10*
“Serene, ethereal, and experimental: Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra’s new album, The Unfolding, is comfortably all of these things” – The Vinyl Factory, Best New Vinyl Releases
“In a world beset by shadows, Peel and her collaborators have created illuminated joy.” – Electronic Sound