music

New Release The Medieval Drone Society II by Laura Cannell

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THE MEDIEVAL DRONE SOCIETY II is the 2nd part of a new project from UK Composer, Performer and Improviser Laura Cannell. Following on from part one (January 2026) – Fragmented sounds of a medieval world are channeled through Cannell’s re-interpretion and improvisation on Cello, Violin, and her signature ‘Overbowed’ Violin playing.

Part II is inspired by the 14th century polymath Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377), a composer whose music has been a mainstay in Cannell’s score collection for over 2 decades. Her interpretations are not arrangements of old music, but an embodiment of emotion through the smallest of fragments. Stretched and pulled the notes are given space to form a new body, and a new identity.

Some tracks have multiple layers and some feature polyphonic ‘Overbowing’ in which Cannell perform all of the parts at once in real-time. The eerie all encompassing sound of drones lead us to an ancient time, a visceral sense of being connected with the past. The use of the ‘overbow’ which is shorter than as regular violin bow gives the sense of faster, raspier breathing, bringing a grainy vocalisation to the music. 

Inspired by fragments of Machaut’s poetry and melody, embedded in his music there is a constant yearning. Cannell gives herself permission to go deeper into the 14th century composers work during the crucial Ars Nova (New Art) period of the Late Middle Ages. This release is a meditation on the sound of old and the new co-existing. You cannot have one without the other. This is not medieval music, but it carries the DNA through its 700 year old fragments. The Medieval Drone Society is a way of creating a new yet ancient secular space to bathe in.

This release follows on from her January release of part 1, her 2025 album Brightly Shone the Moon which had 3 placements in the Official UK Charts in December 2025 and January 2026, and was Folk Album of the Month (December 25) in The Guardian.

Brightly Shone the Moon Album by Laura Cannell

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BRIGHTLY SHONE THE MOON is the 13th solo album from the UK Composer/Performer and Improviser Laura Cannell. Growing up in the marshes in rural Norfolk there is a natural leaning towards the stark landscape and nostalgia of winter’s past. In the village she grew up in carols were sung in the methodist chapel, the church, the village hall and outside people’s doors. Later on, around the piano with her sister playing the right hand and Laura on the left, the tunes were always there, but maybe not the words. This album takes some essence from the past but is firmly rooted in the present. These songs are still embedded in the season and the rural countryside but they have become their own tradition, they belong to each of us if we want them.

Christmas melodies disappear into densely packed woodland copses where half remembered carols are played on the fiddle and the merry organ, but none are what they seem. Brightly Shone the Moon is alternative Christmas music for those who love and mourn in a season where darkness is everywhere. A time when the winter sun is shy, but the moon lights our nights and encourages our strange songs, traditions and hopes for the unfurling of a new and better year.

The 9 tracks on Brightly Shone the Moon were recorded in Laura’s home studio, with duo partner André Bosman guesting on tracks 2, 7 and 8 on synths, and sampling Laura’s violin.

“The sound of ancient carols drift through a deep green winter forest. Branches are heavy with snow. Just out of sight is the sound of a strange rural village band processing over the crunchy pebbles of the churchyard and into the medieval church.

Violins and pipe organs glitch and echo, as half remembered melodies sweep towards you on a bluster of icy wind. Traces of familiar festive songs flicker around you, almost cosy but they are distant as you stand, boots in deep snow, alone.

The moon shines brightly as twinkling ice crystals land silently, softly, on your woollen sleeve. It is that time again, where joy and heartache try to exist together. Traditions come in and out of focus as the winter leaves its mark.”
Laura Cannell October 2025

The Visible Light of Other Worlds – Album by Laura Cannell

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THE VISIBLE LIGHT OF OTHER WORLDS is the 12th solo album from the UK based Composer, Performer and Improviser Laura Cannell. Recently hailed as “The Radical Neo-medieval Musician Laura Cannell” by The Guardian. Her latest album evokes a strange new world between renaissance consort music, neo-classical & ambient music.

This is the sound of fog in a canyon light years from earth, the tempestuous flames of the sun’s surface, the imagined movement of sand in fields of dark dunes, the hurricane spirals of uninhabitable worlds. It is the residue and archived energy of long gone forests, the restless oceans and curving rift valleys of unknown lands in the untouchable reaches of the universe.

Laura Cannell’s 12th album is for an imagined soundtrack to the landscape of worlds we will never touch. 

In The Visible Light of Other Worlds Laura leans into the deep melancholic sound of her octave violin – strung with deep broad strings, giving her music a slightly otherworldly ‘not quite a cello’ sound. Alongside the octave violin she brings in bass recorder and overbowed violin, layering instruments and evoking a strange ensemble somewhere between renaissance consorts and string quartets. Every part is played by Laura.

Over the past ten years Laura Cannell’s music has become synonymous with recognisable landscapes, emotional sonic depictions of place, fragments of medieval music, folklore and of a kind of abstract storytelling. This album is about connecting with something other worldly and tapping into purely imagined lands. The 11 tracks were written and recorded in an intimate home studio setting – inspired by space and planetary images from NASA. The album is a deep inner world responding and sending signals to the furthest reaches. 

“The Visible Light of Other Worlds – Album liner notes – Laura Cannell August 2025

“It never stays the same. We never stay the same. When I look into the dark skies sometimes I hear music from distant landscapes that I will never see. It is music that I haven’t yet written, but somehow exists within. How is the earth’s edge only 62 vertical miles from here? Every time there is a clear sky we see other worlds, I can hear them as I look past the edges. I can sense a soundscape for imagined lands, an invisible film”. 

THE VISIBLE LIGHT OF OTHER WORLDS by Laura Cannell