This album was recorded in the Island Hall on St Agnes, shortly before it was renovated in 2014. The hall - originally a nonconformist chapel - plays a central role in St Agnes life, hosting Island fêtes, wedding receptions, wakes, birthday parties, island meetings, gigs, table tennis tournaments, keep fit classes... I felt it was important to capture the unique acoustic and history of this old building before it was radically altered and improved to face the next phase of its life.
My piano made it down the hill on the back of a tractor and a recording studio was set up in the hall by my good friend and collaborator, Tom Dyson (whose recording and performing credits include the theme music to the TV adaptation of Charlie and Lola.) We set about exploring and recording the familiar sounds of the hall itself. Even the evocative noise of the door opening - a sound which most locals would instantly recognise - made it onto the finished album. We captured oral history from islanders, whose reminiscences trace the story of the building back to WW2 and beyond, and blended these with the found sounds we had captured, together with fragments of some of the music that would have been heard in the hall over the years: from Methodist hymns evoking the building's origins as a chapel; through candlelit wartime dances with Vera Lynn on the wind-up gramophone; to modern rock gigs where the hall's unique acoustic rings to amplified guitars and drum kit...
The result is an atmospheric collage - a scrapbook in sound - which evokes and preserves the past as surely as any photo album.
April 2013
My piano made it down the hill on the back of a tractor and a recording studio was set up in the hall by my good friend and collaborator, Tom Dyson (whose recording and performing credits include the theme music to the TV adaptation of Charlie and Lola.) We set about exploring and recording the familiar sounds of the hall itself. Even the evocative noise of the door opening - a sound which most locals would instantly recognise - made it onto the finished album. We captured oral history from islanders, whose reminiscences trace the story of the building back to WW2 and beyond, and blended these with the found sounds we had captured, together with fragments of some of the music that would have been heard in the hall over the years: from Methodist hymns evoking the building's origins as a chapel; through candlelit wartime dances with Vera Lynn on the wind-up gramophone; to modern rock gigs where the hall's unique acoustic rings to amplified guitars and drum kit...
The result is an atmospheric collage - a scrapbook in sound - which evokes and preserves the past as surely as any photo album.
April 2013
Have a listen to a couple of tracks from the album... The first one features islander Pam Hicks and her memories of dancing on St Agnes during WWII blackout, and the second is a soaring whistle tune built over a ground bass.