Hinterland

Hinterland – a region beyond what is visible or known – comes with freights of psychological scree, and this striking set from Lisa Knapp & Gerry Diver dives deep through the worlds of the hinterland, in sound, lyric and poetry. It opens with visions of anthropomorphic birds on ‘Hawk and Crow’ before the spoken-word tapestry of ‘Train Song’ and the liminal sound and spirit evoked in ‘Star Carr’, named after a Mesolithic site in North Yorkshire, and its hoard of antler headdresses, preserved in waterlogged peat for 11,000 years. With its spectral fiddle, layered vocals and breakdown into skitterish club beats it’s a highlight of the set, as are the traditional songs here, the utterly haunting ‘I Must Away Love’, the inexorable horrors of ‘Long Lankin’ (see Songbook, p82), the delicate despair of ‘Loving Hannah’ and heartbreak of the piano-and-voice version of ‘Lass of Aughrim’, which comes with one of Knapp’s finest vocals.