Tag Archives: Hannah Peel

New music – Hannah Peel: Underland Original Score (Rivertones)

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posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release

Hannah Peel’s original score Underland, Robert Petit’s film based on the Robert Macfarlane book of the same name, is out on CD today via Rivertones, followed by a world premiere of the score next week, part of the Hannah Peel In Focus series at the Barbican on 23-24 October 2026.

Hannah Peel’s Underland draws a glorious and vivid electronic map of the ground below, and what comes buried beneath that ground. Melodies that feel like they’ve been lifted directly from the soil merge with rhythm tracks that could be insects burrowing caves through the undergrowth, and gorgeous ambient echoes intertwined with spectral voices… these elements in Hannah’s hands are the true sound of the underground.

The premiere performance of Underland has been adapted by Kieran Brunt and will be performed by contemporary vocal ensemble Shards. For this unique performance, the score combines choir and electronics with stunning imagery from the film, adapted for stage by the director, Robert Petit.

Talking about the source material, Peel says, “I had read Robert’s book back in 2019, and even included some words from it for my 2022 album ‘The Unfolding’. The chance to actually compose for the book’s film in return though: beautiful synchronicity!”
Going on to explain, “Scoring for these astronauts of the underworld, those sacred ancient cave systems, the mysteries of the universe’s secrets, exploring what would they actually sound like? Those haunting descents that remind us of our planet’s past and future, asking us to look deep into our ancestors’ stories and evaluate where we will go next, made it a profound film to work on. I used ancient Mayan Pod Trumpets and an iron age horn called a Carnyx mixed with baroque choir, string orchestra and synths to bring to life a score that had to combine mythology, technology and possibility.”

Hannah Peel In Focus is a two-day takeover at the Barbican, opening on Friday 23 October at Milton Court on 23 October with PIA – a brand-new live music and dance production for her 7-movement odyssey Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia (2020). The production was created with choreographer Katya Bourvis and creative producer Tala Lee-Turton, and will be shaped by the sound of a 17-piece brass band.

This will be followed on Saturday 24 October with the Underland premiere and a live performance by Hannah Peel & Beibei Wang of their recent album The Endless Dance (Real World Recordings), an album grounded in the strength of ancient concepts. This will be a rare chance to see the album performed, as it comes alive with the joy and freedom of play as together, the artists travel through the 24 solar terms of the Chinese calendar with a cornucopia of sound in tow – synths and prepared piano alongside traditional and unconventional percussion that includes rice bowls and a jawbone.

Hannah Peel won Discovery of the Year at the World Soundtrack Awards last week with her score for Midwinter Break.

Underland is out today on CD via Rivertones

Published post no.3,052 – Monday 19 October 2026

On Record – Dot Allison: Consciousology (Sonic Cathedral)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The solo renaissance of Dot Allison continues, the singer – once of the much-loved dance outfit One Dove – releasing her second solo album in two years.

Allison actually began the album back in 2021, as previous opus Heart-Shaped Scars was being released. The song Double Rainbow was the first to be completed, and Consciousology – described by its author as ‘an imagined voice of a conscious universe expressed through music’.

The album has grown to be just that, taking the electrical activity of a plant and translating it into pitch – a ‘botanical session player’, as Allison labels it, to sit alongside the talents of guitarist Andy Bell and the London Contemporary Orchestra, heard in arrangements made by Hannah Peel.

What’s the music like?

Allison’s vocal has a beautiful fragility on the surface, but is supported by an instrument of deceptive strength beneath. Her hushed tones are ideally complemented by string arrangements made once again by Hannah Peel, who shows an instinctive understanding of the balance between the two, so that the words can be clearly heard at all times.

The London Contemporary Orchestra play like a dream, matching Allison’s feathery vocal on the gorgeous Shyness of Crowns, which slides into Unchanged, whose dreamy guitar from Andy Bell gains in strength as it progresses.

Bleached By The Sun features more exquisite word painting, the sighing strings and whispered vocal painting a heat-soaked, drowsy scene, while Moon Flowers is similarly enchanted.

Unchanged has impressive inner strength, while Bleached By The Sun has delicate multitracked vocals, in something of a fever dream, and is complemented by winding string contours. Moon Flowers is an enchanting song, as is Mother Tree – shot through with slightly psychedelic effects on percussion and harp.

Meanwhile inner strength comes to the fore on Double Rainbow, and Weeping Roses forms a pictorial coda in the company of sleepy guitar and piano accompaniment.

Does it all work?

It does, thanks to Allison’s enchanting voice, which harks back to some of the memorable folk-inflected voices of the 1960s and 1970s. The impression remains that she has more power available should she need it, but these songs are beautifully sung as they are.

Is it recommended?

It is. Consciousology will take its listeners to a place far from where they actually are, its dreamy textures and contours providing enchantment and, ultimately, escapism.

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In concert – Hannah Peel: Fir Wave Live premiere

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by Ben Hogwood

How appropriate that Hannah Peel should be placed in Hall One at Kings Place for the live premiere of her 2021 album Fir Wave. The hall is, after all, constructed with the material from a single, 500 year-old German oak tree named Contessa – and here it absorbed music that could have been written in its honour, as part of Peel’s artist residency in the venue’s Sound Unwrapped series.

Fir Wave originated in lockdown, its open air textures providing solace for many – your reviewer included – during several different phases of isolation. Its appeal lies both in the past and the future. Peel based her musical inspiration on the music of Delia Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop, re-sampling and regenerating their work, and absorbing it into her own style and processes. The resultant work is an emotive one, celebrating the environment while fully aware of the issues it faces.

Peel’s deeply felt electronic music is often achieved through a ‘less is more’ approach – as the vocals on first track Wind Shadow demonstrated. With her live accomplice, Hazel Mills, she proceeded to sculpture and layer some beautifully earthy sounds, the melodic motifs coming up from the ground itself but becoming airborne through their expression by voice, synthesizer treble, violin or piano. For Peel is a multitalented artist, her roots nearer to folk music but now fully embracing the electronic idiom.

This included the intricate and sensitively handled beats. These cut through the smokescreen in Hall One with clear precision, drawing back to enable the appreciation of bigger vistas, both in the title track and Emergence In Nature. Peel was an endearing presence, addressing the audience only occasionally as she preferred to let her music do the talking. While understandably nervous at the reaction to music that hadn’t played in public since its release two years ago, the warmth of the reception confirmed she need not have worried. Patterned Formation had an angular beauty to its repeated loop, while Reaction Diffusion packed a heavier punch.

The attentive audience became fully immersed in the music, transported to the natural spaces it was portraying. Fir Wave itself was a treasure, describing a remarkable process found on certain mountains in the world. When the wind hits a mountainside full of trees, it starts to kill off the front arm of the fir trees, allowing the ones at the back to grow. Over years and years, the steady pattern creates a beautiful sound wave across the mountainside that shifts through a long period of time. Peel somehow described this in her music, which left a lasting impression.

With the album ingrained in our thoughts, Peel returned for two charming encores given with the aid of a music box. This gave her the appearance of standing in a cosmic post office, preparing to dispatch a lettercard to a significant other. The music told compelling stories through a charming cover of Cocteau Twins‘ Sugar Hiccup, dating back to 2010, and a revelatory interpretation of New Order’s Blue Monday, turning the music on its head in duet with Mills.

Even these were not the emotional peak of the evening, however, for in a final encore of Unheard Delia Part 1 we heard the voice of Derbyshire herself, caught in an interview in a sunlit room. This detail, imparted by Peel before we heard the music, helped us to capture the moment itself, and the track remained in thrall to a pioneer of electronic music taken too soon. Peel, to her enormous credit, stepped back at this point to ensure Derbyshire’s voice could, at last, be fully heard and appreciated.

Switched On – Hannah Peel: The Midwich Cuckoos (Original Soundtrack) (Invada Records)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

John Wyndham’s classic 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos has inspired a number of big and small screen responses, the most recent being from Sky with their starry interpretation that has been all over digital TV of late. It tells (plot spoiler alert!) of a group of children arriving by stealth in a leafy English town, then growing quickly both physically and mentally as a unit until their power eclipses that of their parents. As the seven-part series takes shape, the tension between the two reaches breaking point, and a number of startling events lead to an extremely fraught battle of the minds.

Reviews for the series, fronted by Keeley Hawes and Samuel West, have been lukewarm, but to this writer at least the story remains a compelling and disturbing one, the tension rarely letting up, with the idea that such dark things could be afoot in ‘normal’ English towns proving to be profoundly unnerving.

The job of portraying these elements in sound has been given to Hannah Peel, who is building up an impressive arsenal of music for the screen, both in analogue and digital form. For her score to The Midwich Cuckoos she uses analogue synthesizers to replicate the ‘hive mind’, shared by the group of children whose initial purpose is to take over the suburbs, but whose greater aims become even more disturbing.

Peel adds drones and tape manipulations to dislocate the perspective of the viewers, but also dips into more obviously English and pastoral references when writing about the setting and the ‘home’ personalities involved.

What’s the music like?

Deeply unnerving but weirdly consoling at the same time – rather like the children who have mysteriously arrived in the town!

Peel’s ability to portray pastoral scenes through her electronics is a massive bonus, for some of the scene setting is exquisite, matching the rich green shades of the production. Yet there is often a dark undercurrent to the writing and a sense of profound unease, especially when describing the hive mind the children have in place. This is done with a single pitch of changing colour and tonal quality, an eerie echo rebounding as though off the walls of a quarry. Lasting comfort is hard to find, though there is brief solace in the mother-child relationships that are formed.

Peel writes descriptively, her melodies portraying the strength of emotion on show from the mothers towards their children, but the deep drones and atmospherics tell a very different story, revealing the layers at work in the youngsters’ minds.

The title music itself is otherworldly, suggesting the intervention of beings from well beyond this planet, and quoting the birdsong of the cuckoo which has at its heart the promise of spring. The Cuckoo music takes the form of the bird as it grows, with the telling lyric “In June, I change my tune”. The Midwich Cuckoos Theme is dark indeed, blotting out the light in a haunting 20 second salvo.

Does it all work?

It does, with the caveat that some of these pieces are short pockets of music written to score specific scenes rather than hang together as part of an album structure. That said, The Midwich Cuckoos makes for compelling if unsettling home listening, which might end with you positioned behind the sofa!

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is – another auspicious addition to Hannah Peel’s discography, revealing a powerfully dark aspect of her writing for the screen.

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As an aside it is worth purchasing the soundtrack on Bandcamp below, as that gives you four bonus tracks.

Switched On – Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra: The Unfolding

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A nudge in the direction of this new release from Mercury-nominated Hannah Peel and Bristol’s Paraorchestra, under their artistic director Charles Hazlewood. The Paraorchestra are an ensemble of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians, and Peel has been working with them for a couple of years.

Their collaboration The Unfolding is a beauty, as a listen to the title track will confirm. Remote voices paint an airy sound picture, with sonorous cello and flickering electronics.


While that piece is more obviously classical, We Are Part Mineral honours its title by bringing a fulsome percussion section to the fore, a nice combination of propulsive rhythms and spacious textures:

The Unfolding is out now on Real World, and comes highly recommended! You can hear more from the album by listening on the Bandcamp link below: