Laura Cannell & Andre Bosman - New Christmas Rituals (2022) Hi Res

The album features Cannell’s signature Overbow violin and Bosman’s amplified fiddle with rebec bow and bass guitar. As we retreat into our winter burrows, we hear the echoes of distant carols sung behind thick flint walls, fog coated familiar tunes weave through branches across the churchyard. In the darkest days the voices of the past visit, in the lightest they encourage us to make new rituals. The traditions of wintertide and solstice intertwine, as we take the songs without oppression, the melodies without restriction and create New Christmas Rituals. Laura Cannell and André Bosman have performed together in multiple projects over the past fifteen years, most recently at Festival of New (Sept 2022) among the reed beds at Snape Maltings in Suffolk. Projects include touring with Cannell’s Modern Ritual Series which took them in their solo guises to perform throughout the UK at venues such as Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and London’s LSO St Luke’s. As a duo they have performed at Cafe Oto, Spitalfields Festival, Full of Noises, Supernormal, The Union Chapel and were recorded live in concert for BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction. Their first duo album ‘Reckonings’ was released in 2018. They are both self taught on the violin, Laura brings to the duo her background in medieval, experimental and improvised music with 7 critically acclaimed solo albums since 2014 and regular touring in the UK and Europe. André combines his back porch fiddle leanings influenced by his early years growing up in Kentucky, USA, with his love of distorted textures, early minimalism, American primitivism, and medieval dirge. They also compose together music under the name Isobel Raven for film and television, and their music recently featured on the BBC2 series ‘What We Do in the Shadows’. “Laura Cannell and André Bosman evoked elven choirs from modified bows and fiddles, their long, haunting pieces describing medieval cultures on distant planets.” THE WIRE MAGAZINE “It’s definitely not your usual, pretty, cliched neo-classical work at all. There’s a snarling fire to their sound that seems to fulminate in the air, with each player baring their fangs in a way that’s not aggressive but does connote a sort of slow, considered violence to our ears”