For Poppy Ackroyd the three years that preceded Liminal‘s release were a period in which she learned to embrace what she realised only later was chaos. The daughter of much loved sketch artist Norman Ackroyd, she had to deal with his passing in 2023, relocated from her former home in Brighton to a rural new location and also released Notes on Water as a tribute to childhood trips spent in the remote locations her father used for inspiration.
The precept around Liminal was a similar act of personal bravery. Played entirely by her using just the piano and violin, the idea has an obvious nudity to it, but it was touch-the-fear vital: “I had such a chaotic few years, but the only way to cope was to allow things to be messy. I decided to apply this approach to my music – and I found that I fell in love with making music again in a whole new way.”
The results are as evocative as putting yourself so creatively out there can be. Across eight wordless pieces a range of seasons, vistas and emotions are traversed, from the austere, wintery opener In The Mist to Shimmer’s brook-babbling thaw. At it’s most engaging on the weightlessly ambient closer Between Two Worlds and via For Those Who Wait’s kinetic sense of rush, Liminal is the sound of an artist free of the constraints of how the past was turning the unknown into lessons for now and the future.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 