Sleeping Spirals

“I didn’t think I did need a cellist,” Hannah James says in a video describing the genesis of her new duo with French cellist, Toby Kuhn. “But then as soon as he said it, I thought ‘maybe I do need a cellist. Urgently!’”

In Toby Kuhn, Hannah has found not a simple accompanist, but a musical soulmate, where experimentation and playfulness in collaboration is the objective. As European wanderers, the melodies they bring together are from a vast, diverse wellspring; as musicians, they play with form and expectation. Kuhn, a self-confessed ‘post-classical’ cellist, has looked to other traditions, even other instruments, for new approaches to the cello and to his playing, resulting in lively, unanticipated cello that goads James’ foot percussion. The wordless vocals, honed during James’ time in Lady Maisery, takes centre stage in ‘Vine Dance’, gymnastically egged on by the cello, and also makes welcome appearances elsewhere, such as in ‘The Ragged Woman’. It gives the impression that this album was conceived in a relaxed, daydream manner, where buds were allowed to bloom, given the chance to breathe, rather than boxed into pre-existing notions of what album tracks should be.