Genius Loci 1: White Peak

Instrumental duo fiddler Adam Summerhayes and accordionist Murray Grainger like to let things flow. At the heart of The Ciderhouse Rebellion is a desire to capture the spontaneous magic of their music. Here is the latest adventure, this time with the twist that they’ve left the building to record at large in the countryside of the White Peak in central England. The idea for the project sprung from the Roman belief in genius loci – that every place in the world had its own little god or spirit. They set out with microphones, cameras and a drone to locate and tap into the genius loci of Derbyshire’s White Peak.

As is the multimedia nature of our age, this led to a video series broadcast online. The audio release frames each track with a poem from Summerhayes’ daughter Jessie that sets the scene for the listener, rather like those lovely radio broadcasts about tramping in the countryside. The easy, meandering fiddle and accordion lines that follow have the gentle sweep and harmony reminiscent of the White Peak. As such, whatever little god it is that lives up there in those hills, they might have conjured it here.