The four tracks are from a collection of improvisations made on chilly Monday mornings towards the end of 2021. In an arrangement with the church warden, Laura would unlock the church for the public to visit and was given access to the play the pipe organ, in part, “to keep the organ in good health and stop the bellows from drying out”, this was during a fallow year of church usage and became her Monday morning ritual.
Joy and sorrow are in the walls of the 14th century building, their shadows flicker and fall through clear diamond glass onto carved oak pews. The memories of family, love and loss lay dormant within in the bones of the building until the great slumbering animal is woken, the sound of the pipes acting as an early morning alarm call to the deep dreams of the past.
Laura Cannell has fast become one of my favourite contemporary musicians. Everything she does has the local magic in it.