Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra recently announced their collaborative album, The Unfolding, as well as teasing it with the title track. Now, with the album release quickly approaching, the ingenius Northern Irish composer and producer and the acclaimed ensemble of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians shared today a new single from the upcoming record called ‘We Are Part Mineral’. The track comes with a gorgeous video created by Stefan Goodchild (Triple Geek). British nature writer Robert Macfarlane, whose book Underland inspired Peel, comments:

“Here is the geological human body taking form, with its calcified bones, its teeth-reefs: building itself chemically, determinedly, awesomely, from the sheer matter of the young world. It was mineralisation that allowed us to become upright, generating skeletons that might bear us, muscles that might move us, and as I listened, I found myself unconsciously leaning forwards: moving, moved.”

Listen to ‘We Are Part Mineral’ below and grab The Unfolding when it’s out on April 1st through Real World Records.

Photo: York Tillyer

There’s a new album on the way from Northern Irish composer and producer Hannah Peel, following last year’s Mercury Prize nominated Fir Wave. Entitled The Unfolding, the album is a collaboration with Bristol’s Paraorchestra and as the press release explains, it “explores Paraorchestra’s progressive idea of what an orchestra should be, mixing analogue, digital and assistive instruments with a unique ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians to make magic happen.” Speaking about the collaboration, Paraorchestra’s Artistic Director Charles Hazlewood comments:

“It’s been an amazing journey, collaborating on this album with Hannah. The opportunity to bring together Hannah’s amazing skills as a composer with the extraordinary talents of our Paraorchestra’s musicians, and allow it to evolve gradually and naturally as we navigated the restrictions of the pandemic, means that we have created something incredibly new and organic.”

Peel also has this to say about the album:

“The Unfolding is almost a life form in itself, taken from the muddy cells of the earth and taking flight into the air then returning to the elements. It’s like a character in itself. It’s a new way of seeing.”

The Unfolding arrives on April 1st through Real World Records and ahead of it, Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra have shared the title track and an accompanying animated video created by Stefan Goodchild (Triple Geek). Speaking about the meaning of the song and video, Peel comments:

“The Unfolding is a yearning, a reaching for love, to be part of something. One of the great aspects of music is that when you can’t find the language to communicate a feeling – a deep feeling, one that not only echoes the ghosts of your past, but also dreams and futures – music allows you to tell a story, and let that story be spoken and told by others.

From collaborating with the Paraorchestra, to the artwork with Jonathan Barnbook which in turn inspired this visual art by the director Stefan Goodchild, the shapes and forms of the original music have taken on new identities. There’s a sense of deep rooted humanity – that our time here on earth is short and we will never fully hear the rocks sing, as they shift over millennia.”

Here’s the video for ‘The Unfolding’.