Hannah Peel

I have, of late, being playing quite a lot of Hannah Peel on Electronic Ears. There's her solo album, 'Awake But Always Dreaming', her alter ego, Mary Casio, whose album, 'Journey To Cassiopeia', is a mixture of brass and electronica, her contribution to the wonderful The Magnetic North, most recently on 'Prospect of Skelmersdale', plus her membership of John Foxx's touring band. Blimey. 

Last week, while I was playing one of her songs, I thought I'd mention in the following link how much I'd like to see her playing live. Spurred by that thought I jumped onto Google and, would you Adam and Eve it, she was playing tonight at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. I promptly bought tickets for me and the Minx. 

Her performance tonight was part of 'Every Third Minute', a festival of sorts about dementia: "The bright, raw magic and joy of personal relationships are set alongside the gradual loss of her grandmother to dementia as Northern Irish artist and composer Hannah Peel shares her spellbinding music album live." 

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect. Worst case, I thought it would be her singing along to a lot of sequencers. Oh, but guys, it was so, so much better than that. She had a couple of keyboards, her violin, a bunch of pedals, a sequencer, and her music box (more of which later). There were loops that were sequenced up but everything was triggered manually, leading to heart stopping moments when it appeared she'd remembered to do something only just in time.

To be honest, I've avoided her music box releases. She builds music boxes and then manually punches the music reels to play through them. (You can see some on the floor in the picture.) I've never really fancied them but this evening she played four tracks, singing along as she turned the handle and, mea culpa, it was sublime. (Look here to see what I mean.)

At some point, about twenty minutes in, I turned to the Minx and asked what she thought and she just shook her head. Momentarily, I took that to mean that she wasn't enjoying it but then I realised she was absolutely gobsmacked by the performance. 

And I have to say, Hannah Peel was totally engaging; amazing performances from the music box to the synthesisers and sequencer, to her violin playing and mastery of the effects. Between songs she was funny and geeky and charming, and it was over all too quickly. Go see her if you can.

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Reading: 'Lincoln In The Bardo'