Words by Jim Ottewill

With a new baby amid the pandemic and lockdown, composer Poppy Ackroyd’s life and creative direction changed dramatically in 2021. We hear how she’s captured the stasis of the last 18 months in the intimate sounds of new album Pause.

Finding their own unique musical recipe is something many composers strive for. On Brighton-based auteur Poppy Ackroyd’s latest album, Pause, her challenge to realising this was in capturing every nuance of its 10 stripped-back piano tracks. 

“Chefs sometimes say when they cook a dish with just three ingredients, everything has to be right. It’s essentially simple but to do well, every element has to sing,” says Poppy. “This album is similar - it was difficult to record as there’s nowhere to hide within the music.” 

With a new baby and lockdown, the title of Poppy’s fourth record directly references those strange months when our lives came to a temporary halt thanks to the pandemic. Sonically, it’s seen Poppy take a different direction too, exposing the raw bones of her compositions to the outside world. 

“The first three albums were a journey in terms of gradually increasing different layers of instrumentation and exploring recording techniques. But this record is going for something far more intimate,” she explains. “The tracks inside the piano were a nightmare to record - you could hear the neighbours talking next door as the mic gains were so high. It meant I had to have a code where I would put a plant in the window to let them know we were working. Despite the difficulties, I learned so much and had much more control by making it in this way.”

Poppy is from a creative background with her parents working as artists and gallery owners. Classically trained on piano and violin, she invested plenty of time and energy into writing and performing when she first started her musical journey. It was a chance meeting with dancer Maite Delafin that led to Poppy’s first commission.  

“This was crucial for me. I wrote this piece for violin with a loop pedal and she loved it,” remembers Poppy. “We toured and appeared at the Edinburgh Festival. It really gave me confidence and went on to become Grounds on my first album.” 

Originally 15 minutes long, the composition was the soundtrack to a solo dance piece choreographed and performed by Maite. For Poppy, this was a real turning point, not only in terms of career milestones but how she perceived her own music too. “I was really shy up until that point,” she says. “But this made me feel like I had something important to say. I’ve not stopped writing and recording since.”

Poppy’s musical styles have been likened to forward-thinking composers Nils Frahm and Max Richter but she’s always strived to go far further than take influence from any particular style or sound.

“I always think artists should write the music they want to hear,” she states. “Not that I’m saying I’m unique but I found I’d not heard many write what I do. I felt like I wanted to use certain sounds in particular ways so I really looked to explore this.”

Alongside her solo endeavours, which have now stretched into four albums full of well-crafted pieces orbiting the piano and violin, Poppy also works with her partner Joe Acheson’s live project Hidden Orchestra. 

“He’s always been super encouraging to me and I’ve learned a lot from him,” she explains. “He has always been confident enough to do whatever he’s wanted musically before I did even though we studied together. Then I was like, ah right, it’s my turn now.”

With Poppy’s debut album ‘Escapement’ released in December 2012, her creative process has evolved over each release and project she’s immersed herself in. At the heart of how Poppy works amid the experimentation, is meticulous attention to detail and determination to make every idea count. 

“I was told that I’d create lots of music and end up throwing plenty of it away,” she explains of how she works. “But I’ve never done that, I’ve used pretty much everything I’ve ever written.”

Poppy puts this down to making her ideas go through a rigorous process of testing and editing until they look and feel just right. “I would spend 16 hours a day on my music if I could, just working ideas through, tweaking things and moving them around,” she explains. “If I want to hear something over and over again, then that element can stay. But if after a while, it becomes irritating or too obvious, then I’ll move it. I’m really obsessive about what I do.”

On writing music, Poppy usually tries to sit down with her instruments when feeling inspired, then pours as much of herself as she can into any ideas. “There will hopefully be this feeling of wanting to create something. So when I’m feeling a certain emotion or have a narrative in mind,” she states. 

A process of improvisation then pushes her musical process forward, using ideas as building blocks for layers of sound or recording in creative bursts before returning to refine them at a later date. “My process is down to this whole concept of feeling like a piece of music is already there,” says Poppy. “It’s how Michaelangelo described sculpture - the work already exists in the stone, you just need to try and find it.”

Poppy constructed all of ‘Pause’ in what she describes as her “tiny” home studio, a space that has been adapted around the needs of their family. 

“I’ve got two nice speakers, a sound card, then a grand piano downstairs taking up most of the living room,” she explains. “It’s super simple and is just about having everything set up well. I get weirdly impatient with gear, especially new pieces of kit as I just want to get stuck into the music.”

Becoming a parent has meant Poppy has had less time to invest in setting things up or intensively researching new musical equipment. For now, immediacy around the creative process is really important. “I just have so little time now I’m a parent that I just want to get on with it and make music - which is why this became as stripped back as it has,” Poppy explains. “There were no setting things up - it would just be to sit down and play and pick up from where I had left off.”

The album’s shape and form were born out of the restrictions imposed by lockdown with the piano taking up most of the heart of the record and compositional process. 

“I didn’t expect it to take this form but then with the pandemic it all made sense,” explains Poppy. “The day the lockdown happened, I was due to have my piano tuned but the tuner cancelled. I was stuck with an instrument that felt like a blunt pencil so I just started writing. The piano tuner was in the end the only person who came to the house for a whole year. My toddler only knew him outside of the two of us.”

One of the highlights of ‘Pause’ is ‘Suspended’, a track that sees Poppy playing with both hands inside the piano. 

“It’s a favourite of mine from the record. It’s simple, like a lullaby but is technically difficult to play and was hard to record,” she says. “But I feel like it really works, the balance between the hands and how I use the piano feels like something new and exciting.” 

Alongside her solo endeavours, Poppy’s music has seen her music adorn animations, live performances and projects with actors and dancers. A new project is a score with friend and filmmaker Ainslie Henderson. The pair previously collaborated on Stems, a short film that ended up winning the pair a Scottish BAFTA for Best Animation. 

“This latest project is another animation and it’s heavenly just working with these beautiful puppets,” she laughs. “It’s a great way to get over the intensity of Pause.”

For Poppy, the music-making process on a project like this involves a different approach to her own artist material, pushing her creativity in different ways. “I find coming up with those initial ideas quite stressful,” she says. “But as soon as we’d found the sound world, then I could relax into enjoying making the music. If you have free reign to do whatever you want, then it’s different but we’ve worked hard to come up with a sonic palette to really fit the visuals.”

Despite the collaborative nature of this latest work, with Poppy’s own music, she keeps it to herself until it’s ready to be released into the wider world. 

“Sometimes Joe might come in at the end of a recording session as it’s nice to have some fresh ears on what you’ve been working on. But no one usually hears it until the very last week,” she says. 

This way of working feeds into her creative process and how she likes to operate within her own musical world. “For me you just need to be 100% convinced as the creator. As long as you’re happy and convinced by what you’ve done, then it doesn't matter how people react.”

With live shows being cautiously discussed, Poppy’s future looks like an exciting one. For now, though, she’s looking forward to moving beyond ‘Pause’ and unveiling it to the wider world.  

“I’ve been a zombie creatively since having kids,” she laughs. “I don’t know how this album happened or came together but I worked as hard as I could on it and put everything into it. It was an emotional rollercoaster and hard to do but I’m so excited to see how people react to it.”

Visit poppyackroyd.com for more information.