Though she is probably still most widely known for her work presenting Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3, Hannah Peel is widely recognised as one of the brightest composers around. The Northern Irish artist, composer, producer and broadcaster studied music at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and has a wide and varied CV. Her work includes collaborating with Paul Weller on his number one album On Sunset and writing and conducting all the orchestral arrangements for his 2018 shows at London’s Royal Festival Hall, to composing and recording the soundtrack for Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, which earned Peel a 2019 Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score).

Quoting her Spotify bio, her own releases include “Awake But Always Dreaming, which became an ode to her grandmother’s mind as she lived with dementia; the electronic ruralism of Chalk Hill Blue, an album recorded with the poet Will Burns; and connecting our brain neurons to stars in our solar system, the space-themed Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia, scored for synthesisers and a 30 piece colliery brass band.”

Her new album Fir Wave continues this habit for interesting, captivating work. The seven tracks assembled here use sounds from a recording by BBC Radiophonic Workshop composers Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson as a sort of jumping off point, spiralling outwards from there to explore themes such as neuroscience, climate change and space, which feature in much of her work. The album’s title itself came from a picture in National Geographic of a mountainside covered in fir trees.

Each track on this Mercury Prize-nominated album retains its own distinctive feel, yet knits into the fabric of the whole album too. Listening to Fir Wave is an incredibly engaging experience, and if, as I was, you’re new to Peel’s music, it’s a fantastic place to start. 

Fir Wave tracklist:

1. Wind Shadow
2. Emergence In Nature
3. Patterned Formation 
4. Carbon Cycle
5. Ecovocative
6. Fir Wave
7. Reaction Diffusion

Find out more about Hannah Peel on her website.

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.