WILL BURNS AND HANNAH PEEL

Chalk Hill Blue RIVERTONES Where spoken word and electronica meet the hillside walks of Buckinghamshire.

Inspired by walking the luscious, chalk-scored Chiltern hills surrounding Burns’ Buckinghamshire home, this collaboration between poet-in-residence for arts-meets-nature webmag Caught By The River and idiosyncratic electronic forager Hannah Peel beautifully brings that potentiallyhazardous warhorse the spoken word album into 2019 with a masterpiece of “electronic ruralism”. Peel frames the poet’s ruminations about life, nature, the Ridgeway path and local butterfly that names this album with supernaturallysympathetic analogue soundscapes, whether simulating overhead power- lines with the Detroit techno crackle of The Night Life, unleashing the coruscating swoop of Change or sculpting piano meditations on Out Of Doors and Summer Blues. Pastoral and autumnal with harsh reality underscoring the mournful February and others, the set is a shining example of an old musical form growing up gracefully. This writer grew up tramping these parts (and can see them from his window now) so heartily approves of this modern representation of this area. Plugging into the region’s ancient allure, Burns and Peel have created a rivetingly evocative tone poem for modern times.