“Paper” by Poppy Ackroyd

February 2nd, saw the release of Poppy Ackroyd’s first full-length album Resolve via One Little Indian Records. A classically trained pianist, violinist, producer, and composer. Recently, she released her video for the album single “Paper”, where she creatively recorded and manipulated experimental beats, born from using paper over piano strings, to create the ground-breaking track. The video was directed by Tom Newell.

Having played alongside giants of the genre, Hauschka and Nils Frahm, the unique musician signed to Bjork’s label One Little Indian Records for her most ambitious and progressive piece of work to date.

Much of the album is extremely personal to Poppy. In her own words: “Resolve is about the determination to embrace the good things in life whilst dealing with unexpected and challenging difficulties. Finding the light in the dark, facing sadness and loss head on, and developing a growing inner strength.”

Although a keen collaborator outside of her solo work – having created soundtracks for film, dance, physical theatre and radio – this is the first record for which Poppy has written for and employed other players, including Manu Delago (Bjork, Cinematic Orchestra, Anoushka Shankar) playing hang, Mike Lesirge (Bonobo, Andreya Triana) playing clarinets and flute, and Jo Quail on cello.

Through studying contemporary classical piano works and listening to electronic music, Ackroyd quickly developed her signature compositional style on previous albums, using contemporary pianistic ideas whilst also inhabiting the world of sound beyond the keyboard, using extended techniques to ‘play’ other parts of the instruments as well. The artist works by recording improvised contemporary classical piano motifs and then rearranging and manipulating these sounds digitally.

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