In good company for Joseph Burnett’s end of year essay

Laura Cannell speaks to Stewart Smith in The Wire 370. Describing the process which led to the recording of her debut solo album Quick Sparrows Over The Black Earth

LISTEN TO:
Tracks at The Wire

“Laura Cannell conjures a sonic portal between the past and present.” THE WIRE

“The raw beauty of her melodies glimmer through prickly thickets of stark and dissonant chordal drones” THE WIRE

Interview in the December Issue of The Wire & featured on their Resonance FM Radio show hosted by Jennifer Lucy Allan listen here.

“Laura Cannell is the Roland Rahsaan Kirk of neo-medieval music

…an outstanding set of neo-medieval music for fiddle and recorder from Norfolk based Laura Cannell. A collaborator with This Heat drummer Charles Hayward and Ralph ‘Bass Clef’ Cumbers, among others, Cannell is no academic revivalist, finding her individual voice through an open-minded compositional approach and innovative instrumental techniques. She often plays her fiddle with a deconstructed bow, placing the hair over the strings to create a droning chordal accompaniment to her beautiful edge-of-the-world melodies. Recalling the jazz multi-instrumentalist Roland Rahsaan Kirk, whose signature technique was the playing of several horns at once, Cannell reconstructs the music of 12th century mystic Hildegard Von Bingen on double recorders, her left hand weaving an alto counterpoint around the right hand melody. A magical set which deftly captures the ancient-modern spirit of Tusk.”

TUSK Festival live Review – THE QUIETUS October 2014