Fenella

We’re delighted to welcome experimental ensemble Fenella to Future Yard, to headline our CRATE Market Summer special. Fenella is the ambient pop project of British singer/songwriter Jane Weaver, along with her frequent collaborators Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah (both of Starless and Bible Black). The group’s self-titled 2019 debut was composed as an alternate score for the 1981 Hungarian cult animation classic Fehérlófia, with the project’s second release, The Metallic Index, released in 2022 via Fire Records.

The sound structures you hear at the heart of this album form the basis for what is clearly Fenella’s best work yet, while the individual spectral vocalisations and ethereal electronics that circle the room capture this trio’s return, as peripheral visions, in full-phantasmic bloom. Support on the night comes from Claire Welles and Daniel Thorne.

Tickets available now.

Weaver’s solo career shifted from acoustic folk during the 2000s to synth-heavy, Krautrock-inspired dream pop on albums like 2014’s The Silver Globe and 2017’s Modern Kosmology. Along with Philipson and Ullah, two contributors to those records, Weaver created a re-imagined score for Marcell Jankovics’ fantastically trippy 1981 animation Fehérlófia (Son of the White Mare). The trio recorded initial sessions in a remote cottage in Northwest Scotland before adding overdubs at Eve Studios near Manchester, where Weaver’s previous few albums were produced. Filled with shimmering synth arpeggios, dreamy vocals, and transformative guitar textures, Fenella was released by Fire Records in 2019.

The group returned in 2022 with The Metallic Index, an album loosely based on the true story of a psychic nurse based in London in the 1920s. Opening with images of a train ride, the LP’s 40-minute musical journey could be neatly described as a “Metapsychic melodrama for multiple synthesists”. Loosely based on a genuine story accounting the short-lived abilities of a young psychic nurse in 1920’s London, Fenella’s niche muse justifies this celebratory return to vinyl but not once does it fall into the supposed tropes of staid hauntological-plunderphonics which repeatedly come to muddy our thirsty streams. Fenella make spirited melodic progressive pop music that pulsates with the same magnetism that fans of Jane Weaver’s own signature work have come to expect and hold closely.

Future Yard presents
Fenella
featuring Jane Weaver
+ Claire Welles
+ Daniel Thorne
Saturday 3rd June 2023
CRATE Market afterparty event
7.45pm doors
£12.50 advance (standing)
75 Argyle Street
#thefutureisbirkenhead

Tickets available online in advance or in person at the Future Yard Box Office.
Future Yard is a cashless venue – all payments are taken by contactless or chip and pin. Live curfew 11pm. Kitchen open til 9pm.
If you have any specific access requests, please read all of the details about accessibility at Future Yard here. This is a standing show. We are able to provide a small number of stools if you contact us in advance.

Fiercely singular in her approach to music a nous you simply can’t teach.

One of Liverpool’s finest underground provocateurs and with a a long history of recording music under her belt, Claire Welles has straddled almost every musical styling yet imbues her music with a rich melodic tendency which makes her experimental pop ease into your being over time. If you let it.

Daniel Thorne is a composer and saxophonist fascinated by the infinite shades of possibility that exist between the notions of acoustic and electronic, and composition and improvisation. This blurring of lines is at the heart of his music, creating a unique sonic world that obscures and detaches his instrument’s sound from its typical associations. Avant-garde, noise, electronics, ecclesiastical, classical and a touch of jazz come together on stage, each occupying their own space while acquiescing with the whole.