Weirdly, I do believe I’ve only written about Hannah Schneider once or twice in the 11 years I’ve been doing this which is surprising as she is one of Denmark’s more intriguing characters.
As with her compatriot Lydmor and the Norwegian Sol Heilo, both of whom are regulars here, Hannah is a composer and in her case she has just completed a detailed composition.
Now she turns her attention to her new album ‘In this room’, her first in three years. ‘Lighthouse’ is the first single from it, co-written and produced with Christian Balvig. I hope that doesn’t mean she’s actually living in one; that could get lonely.
The previous occasions I’ve encountered her I’ve felt like I’d been listening to an interstellar visitor who jumped off a tumbling comet or rock as it passed Earth with a brief to understand what ‘music’ means to the Earthlings and to write what they call a ‘song’ before her chariot came back from around the sun, picked her up and vanished back into the cosmos.
She’s obviously made a return journey because it’s as if she’s checked her notes from last time and made a conscious effort to cross-reference even more genres this time around.
I’m hard pressed to think of anyone who sounds remotely like her. Even the underlying beat mimics the patterns being thrown out by that weird ‘comet’ 3I/Atlas right now which spell out (if you believe the listeners) a place in Ancient Egypt. Someone play the five tones.
Mixed up in all this are rhythms that might have emanated from the Middle East or Indian sub-continent synthesised cosmic groans, a Spanish flamenco guitarist somewhere in the corner of the studio, percussion strokes that sound like sporadic machine gun fire across a ceasefire line (we’re always topical), Flo hitting Andy Capp over the head with a saucepan (Google them) and various other noises off.
(Perhaps we should dub her as ‘Hannah Capp’ as she always seems to be wearing one).
Collectively, they are disturbing, in tone, in substance, and in prompting you to wonder if this is what living on a lighthouse amounts to. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for something – I didn’t get much of a clue from the lyrics apart from something about it having been a dream, but then I couldn’t hear too much of them – or perhaps, continuing the astronomical theme, it’s a lighthouse somewhere in Sagittarius.
I think they made the wrong choice of music for the Golden Record placed on the Voyager spacecraft 50 years ago (which was, if you’re interested, classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, rock and roll from Chuck Berry, blues by Louis Armstrong, and traditional music from various cultures like Javanese gamelan, Mexican mariachi and even Azerbaijani bagpipes.
With so much going on up there they will have to send another Voyager before too long and this time they should put Chuck’s ding a ling back in his pants and trust Hannah’s ‘Lighthouse’ to shine where the Sun doesn’t reach.
(Continues after Spotify link)
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