Laura Cannell
LYRELYRELYRE
Boomkat Product Review:
East Anglia’s uchronic folk anarchaevist Laura Cannell speaks her truth to the lyre in an imaginative repurposing for the modern day of an instrument popular in pre-christian England, and with roots reaching back to the ancient world - RIYL Rhodri Davies, Tristwch Y Fenywod, Michael O’Shea, TMLHBAC.
Under a title proposed on post-it note by Jennifer Lucy Allen many moons ago, ‘LyreLyreLyre’ takes its cues from the ornate, C.6th-7th, Anglo Saxon lyre, discovered in the Sutton Hoo burial in 1939, for a typically enchanting new chapter of Laura Cannell’s ongoing resuscitation of ancient and medieval musics, and instruments, with an inherently modern - if timeless - touch.
As with all of Cannell’s singular oeuvre, her deep ties to the land, its history, people, and their cultures, surfaces in wonderfully speculative fashion that takes her mix of research and poetic license to ruminate on what might have been and, in the process, transport minds from the pressure of modern life, if only for the duration, but possibly lingering on the mind for long after...
“This album is an offering to a history we were supposed to remember, but somewhere between the centuries it was lost deep in our collective folk memory, we forgot… The ship burial was supposed to be a beacon in the landscape. We were meant to remember who was there, but instead it slipped away as we farmed the land and cut trenches through the earth for our wars. All the time oblivious to a thread which was in front of us, a relic of pagan times, a true sound and link to the past. There has been much made of the other buried treasures, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the golden treasures, the shield and the ship but the lyre has a visceral connection. A physicality and a sound, a language and a feeling that enables us to truly feel connected to our predecessors when we strike the strings”. (Laura Cannell March 2025)”
In Cannell’s hands staccato plucks of lyre are entwined with her signature bass recorder and the renaissance era double reed crumhorn in unequal temperament, as it was BITD, and deftly rent with FX in a mix of plangent and intimate improvisations that delve into the spaces between folk and ambient, or what the artist terms “feral chamber” music, with results that resonate not just England’s history but also solo instrumental musics of myriad other regions.
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Boomkat Product Review:
East Anglia’s uchronic folk anarchaevist Laura Cannell speaks her truth to the lyre in an imaginative repurposing for the modern day of an instrument popular in pre-christian England, and with roots reaching back to the ancient world - RIYL Rhodri Davies, Tristwch Y Fenywod, Michael O’Shea, TMLHBAC.
Under a title proposed on post-it note by Jennifer Lucy Allen many moons ago, ‘LyreLyreLyre’ takes its cues from the ornate, C.6th-7th, Anglo Saxon lyre, discovered in the Sutton Hoo burial in 1939, for a typically enchanting new chapter of Laura Cannell’s ongoing resuscitation of ancient and medieval musics, and instruments, with an inherently modern - if timeless - touch.
As with all of Cannell’s singular oeuvre, her deep ties to the land, its history, people, and their cultures, surfaces in wonderfully speculative fashion that takes her mix of research and poetic license to ruminate on what might have been and, in the process, transport minds from the pressure of modern life, if only for the duration, but possibly lingering on the mind for long after...
“This album is an offering to a history we were supposed to remember, but somewhere between the centuries it was lost deep in our collective folk memory, we forgot… The ship burial was supposed to be a beacon in the landscape. We were meant to remember who was there, but instead it slipped away as we farmed the land and cut trenches through the earth for our wars. All the time oblivious to a thread which was in front of us, a relic of pagan times, a true sound and link to the past. There has been much made of the other buried treasures, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the golden treasures, the shield and the ship but the lyre has a visceral connection. A physicality and a sound, a language and a feeling that enables us to truly feel connected to our predecessors when we strike the strings”. (Laura Cannell March 2025)”
In Cannell’s hands staccato plucks of lyre are entwined with her signature bass recorder and the renaissance era double reed crumhorn in unequal temperament, as it was BITD, and deftly rent with FX in a mix of plangent and intimate improvisations that delve into the spaces between folk and ambient, or what the artist terms “feral chamber” music, with results that resonate not just England’s history but also solo instrumental musics of myriad other regions.
Boomkat Product Review:
East Anglia’s uchronic folk anarchaevist Laura Cannell speaks her truth to the lyre in an imaginative repurposing for the modern day of an instrument popular in pre-christian England, and with roots reaching back to the ancient world - RIYL Rhodri Davies, Tristwch Y Fenywod, Michael O’Shea, TMLHBAC.
Under a title proposed on post-it note by Jennifer Lucy Allen many moons ago, ‘LyreLyreLyre’ takes its cues from the ornate, C.6th-7th, Anglo Saxon lyre, discovered in the Sutton Hoo burial in 1939, for a typically enchanting new chapter of Laura Cannell’s ongoing resuscitation of ancient and medieval musics, and instruments, with an inherently modern - if timeless - touch.
As with all of Cannell’s singular oeuvre, her deep ties to the land, its history, people, and their cultures, surfaces in wonderfully speculative fashion that takes her mix of research and poetic license to ruminate on what might have been and, in the process, transport minds from the pressure of modern life, if only for the duration, but possibly lingering on the mind for long after...
“This album is an offering to a history we were supposed to remember, but somewhere between the centuries it was lost deep in our collective folk memory, we forgot… The ship burial was supposed to be a beacon in the landscape. We were meant to remember who was there, but instead it slipped away as we farmed the land and cut trenches through the earth for our wars. All the time oblivious to a thread which was in front of us, a relic of pagan times, a true sound and link to the past. There has been much made of the other buried treasures, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the golden treasures, the shield and the ship but the lyre has a visceral connection. A physicality and a sound, a language and a feeling that enables us to truly feel connected to our predecessors when we strike the strings”. (Laura Cannell March 2025)”
In Cannell’s hands staccato plucks of lyre are entwined with her signature bass recorder and the renaissance era double reed crumhorn in unequal temperament, as it was BITD, and deftly rent with FX in a mix of plangent and intimate improvisations that delve into the spaces between folk and ambient, or what the artist terms “feral chamber” music, with results that resonate not just England’s history but also solo instrumental musics of myriad other regions.
Boomkat Product Review:
East Anglia’s uchronic folk anarchaevist Laura Cannell speaks her truth to the lyre in an imaginative repurposing for the modern day of an instrument popular in pre-christian England, and with roots reaching back to the ancient world - RIYL Rhodri Davies, Tristwch Y Fenywod, Michael O’Shea, TMLHBAC.
Under a title proposed on post-it note by Jennifer Lucy Allen many moons ago, ‘LyreLyreLyre’ takes its cues from the ornate, C.6th-7th, Anglo Saxon lyre, discovered in the Sutton Hoo burial in 1939, for a typically enchanting new chapter of Laura Cannell’s ongoing resuscitation of ancient and medieval musics, and instruments, with an inherently modern - if timeless - touch.
As with all of Cannell’s singular oeuvre, her deep ties to the land, its history, people, and their cultures, surfaces in wonderfully speculative fashion that takes her mix of research and poetic license to ruminate on what might have been and, in the process, transport minds from the pressure of modern life, if only for the duration, but possibly lingering on the mind for long after...
“This album is an offering to a history we were supposed to remember, but somewhere between the centuries it was lost deep in our collective folk memory, we forgot… The ship burial was supposed to be a beacon in the landscape. We were meant to remember who was there, but instead it slipped away as we farmed the land and cut trenches through the earth for our wars. All the time oblivious to a thread which was in front of us, a relic of pagan times, a true sound and link to the past. There has been much made of the other buried treasures, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the golden treasures, the shield and the ship but the lyre has a visceral connection. A physicality and a sound, a language and a feeling that enables us to truly feel connected to our predecessors when we strike the strings”. (Laura Cannell March 2025)”
In Cannell’s hands staccato plucks of lyre are entwined with her signature bass recorder and the renaissance era double reed crumhorn in unequal temperament, as it was BITD, and deftly rent with FX in a mix of plangent and intimate improvisations that delve into the spaces between folk and ambient, or what the artist terms “feral chamber” music, with results that resonate not just England’s history but also solo instrumental musics of myriad other regions.
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Comes with full page of liner notes written by Laura based on her research into the Sutton Hoo Lyre.
Boomkat Product Review:
East Anglia’s uchronic folk anarchaevist Laura Cannell speaks her truth to the lyre in an imaginative repurposing for the modern day of an instrument popular in pre-christian England, and with roots reaching back to the ancient world - RIYL Rhodri Davies, Tristwch Y Fenywod, Michael O’Shea, TMLHBAC.
Under a title proposed on post-it note by Jennifer Lucy Allen many moons ago, ‘LyreLyreLyre’ takes its cues from the ornate, C.6th-7th, Anglo Saxon lyre, discovered in the Sutton Hoo burial in 1939, for a typically enchanting new chapter of Laura Cannell’s ongoing resuscitation of ancient and medieval musics, and instruments, with an inherently modern - if timeless - touch.
As with all of Cannell’s singular oeuvre, her deep ties to the land, its history, people, and their cultures, surfaces in wonderfully speculative fashion that takes her mix of research and poetic license to ruminate on what might have been and, in the process, transport minds from the pressure of modern life, if only for the duration, but possibly lingering on the mind for long after...
“This album is an offering to a history we were supposed to remember, but somewhere between the centuries it was lost deep in our collective folk memory, we forgot… The ship burial was supposed to be a beacon in the landscape. We were meant to remember who was there, but instead it slipped away as we farmed the land and cut trenches through the earth for our wars. All the time oblivious to a thread which was in front of us, a relic of pagan times, a true sound and link to the past. There has been much made of the other buried treasures, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the golden treasures, the shield and the ship but the lyre has a visceral connection. A physicality and a sound, a language and a feeling that enables us to truly feel connected to our predecessors when we strike the strings”. (Laura Cannell March 2025)”
In Cannell’s hands staccato plucks of lyre are entwined with her signature bass recorder and the renaissance era double reed crumhorn in unequal temperament, as it was BITD, and deftly rent with FX in a mix of plangent and intimate improvisations that delve into the spaces between folk and ambient, or what the artist terms “feral chamber” music, with results that resonate not just England’s history but also solo instrumental musics of myriad other regions.
More from Laura Cannell:
-
Laura Cannell A Compendium of Beasts Volume 2 Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell A Compendium of Beasts Volume 1 Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell Winterlore Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell Firelore Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell Ghostlore Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
More from Brawl Records:
-
Laura Cannell A Compendium of Beasts Volume 2 Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell A Compendium of Beasts Volume 1 Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell Winterlore Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell Firelore Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Laura Cannell Ghostlore Brawl Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV