CMU Approved

Approved: Poppy Ackroyd

By | Published on Monday 30 October 2017

Poppy Ackroyd

Set to release her new album, ‘Resolve’, early next year, neo-classical composer Poppy Ackroyd has released the first single from it, ‘The Calm Before’.

The track “is almost entirely made up of clarinet sounds”, she explains. “The percussion was created using layers of clicking clarinet and bass clarinet keys, starting with a looped and chopped rhythm taken from an improvisation that appears throughout”.

The new album is the first on which Ackroyd employed other musicians to perform her compositions, before manipulating them in the studio. “With the other musicians, I asked them to explore the instrument and to create as many weird and wonderful sounds as they could”, she says. “I then spent hours sifting through the recordings and choosing sounds and short percussive ideas that I could rearrange and build the track from”.

As its title promises, ‘The Calm Before’ certainly builds a level of intrigue as we wait for the full album. Listen to the track in full here:

Stay up to date with all of the artists featured in the CMU Approved column by subscribing to our Spotify playlist.



READ MORE ABOUT: