Interview

Peel’s new album, Fir Wave, sees her resampling, re-imagining and re-dreaming the music of celebrated electronic pioneer Delia Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop. Hamish Mackintosh found out more

© Peter Marley

Full disclosure… Fir Wave, the sublime new offering from sonic alchemist Hannah Peel, has become something of an obsession to these ears. From the other-worldy voices of opener Wind Shadow, through the hypnotic beats and synths of Emergence In Nature all the way through to the ethereal splendour of album closer, Reaction Diffusion, Peel has crafted a spell-binding electronic gem.

Given access to use original recordings from BBC Radiophonic Workshop legend Delia Derbyshire as DNA for the project, Fir Wave, allowed Peel to respectfully re-interpret the source-material, building digital instruments from it to then launch it into bristling electronic realms Derbyshire would be proud of.

Fir Wave, is a high watermark in Hannah Peel’s already impressive musical CV, which includes an Emmy nomination for her soundtrack to Game of Thrones: The Last Watch along with musical collaborations with artists including John Foxx, Paul Weller, Erland Cooper and Simon Tong (as The Magnetic North). Fir Wave exists in a space where electronic music of the past, present and future collide perfectly. Little wonder FM was so excited to catch up with Hannah and find out more about Delia, DAWs and discovering more tactile ways of sculpting sound.

Fir Wave seems to be getting universally excellent reviews, that must be pleasing?

“I’m so blown away, actually because sometimes you make a record that you work so intensely on and my records usually have so many moving parts with, like, 30 brass players or the like. This one was just so simple, and it was just nice to be able to make the record and put it out as it’s self-released. Yeah, the fact that people are picking it up and talking about it is just beautiful.”

It’s quite something to be given free access to Delia Derbyshire’s catalogue. Did you have the project in mind and then ask for the archives?

“EMI Productions, who own the rights now, just came to me and asked if I was interested in making a library record for them: ‘here’s your starting point!’. I guess because I’d never done a library before that, I did have some reservations. But they quickly dissipate when you take out the feeling of having to do something that you’ve never done before – and that you’ll be using material that’s very precious to a lot of people. So yeah, I mean, once I kind of decided how I was going to do it, it became very easy. But yeah, there was a lot of trepidation about it to begin with.”