Lisa Knapp and Gerry Diver are partners in life as well as music and their new album Hinterland is a glowing endorsement of their pairing, one which clearly goes beyond just music and lyrics. Each has a formidable skillset as well as a questioning approach to just what can be explored through their craft.
There’s something bewitching and hypnotic about the arrangements and production of Hinterland, somehow Diver has placed the sound as if it feels like it’s just breaking through the edge of consciousness. Some kind of dreamlike resonance imbues every track with an otherworldly aura. It speaks of the interface between the natural world and our internal imagined realm, the intersection of which is quite possibly what makes us human. We may not understand or see the world as every other animal and bird does, but we have the ability to view it through an internal filter that overlays meaning and imagination. Maybe this allowed our ancestors to read a spiritual significance into every bird call and find meaning in the passage of the sun and moon across the sky. Whatever it was, Knapp and Diver have tuned into it to startling effect. Lisa is always the focus, well, okay, not on the instrumental tracks, but her voice has a spine tingling melancholy edge that keeps you rapt.
You can feel her eyes boring into you as she intones the lyrics on Star Carr, a song that explores the meaning of archaeological finds dated to the mesolithic from a site discovered in North Yorkshire. The Carr held the oldest structure yet discovered in Britain plus 21 enigmatic deer skulls that could have been worn as a kind of headdress, and Knapp and Diver jump right into an intense meditation on the possible rituals and sounds that would have accompanied them 10,000 years ago. Knapp mentions that “We wanted to explore both what we know and what lies beyond our understanding in nature and history”, and boy do they do it.
In some ways they are doing what several Scandinavian bands and artists are doing, where Wardruna and Heilung are looking back to their roots in a very Norse way, Knapp and Diver are looking at the mythical landscape of Britain in a uniquely British way. There is none of the bombast of those bands here, it is a much more measured aural journey into our past. Some rhythms and percussion remind one of the best trip-hop, but it’s too grounded to be in that pigeon-hole, maybe trip-folk? The listener is certainly taken on a journey with the album, it deserves the reverence of being listened to on vinyl in one sitting. I Must Away Love touches on trad folk but ploughs its own furrow, showing how the duo are a masterclass in less being so much more. There is an incredible warmth that comes through in every song and tune, I may have made it out to be a challenging album but it is nothing of the sort, it filters events and stories through that state we are in between sleeping and waking. Maybe that’s why they called it Hinterland, one definition of which is ‘an area lying beyond what is visible or known’, give it a listen and they’ll usher you in. Just be aware that you may not want to leave.
Iain Hazlewood
https://www.lisaknapp.co.uk/
https://www.gerrydiver.com/
https://lisaknappgerrydiver.bandcamp.com/album/hinterland
