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Hannah Schneider – In This Room – 27/02/26

“All is gone/ We are carbon, we are stone”

Hannah Schneider spent a two-month residency at The Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen recording In This Room. The museum is dedicated to the life and works of Bertel Thorvaldsen, a Danish-Icelandic sculptor of international fame who specialised in the Neoclassical (an artistic movement inspired by the art and culture of Ancient Rome and Greece). Thorvaldsen himself is buried in the courtyard.

Schneider’s latest LP has become a fabric in this intricate tapestry. Just as Thorvaldsen was inspired by the monuments of classical antiquity, a civilisation long-dead, Schneider allows the sculptor’s mausoleum to guide her sonic exploration, tying together the past and the present through the interplay of acoustic and electronic music. 

Each song on the track is its own wall of portraits, a room gilded and grotesque. ‘Starry Void’ starts off jittering with an electronic sheen, before the strings unfold its edges. ‘Lighthouse’ has an airy tactility to it, the percussion churning like a clock. Other tracks tenderly lead you down the hallway, like ‘The Apartment’, or snag you in their current, like the title track – either way, you’re enraptured.

Schneider’s vocals have an unreality to them, memories smudged through indelicacy. That’s not to say Schneider has been careless. In fact, there is a sophistication to each piece, surely enhanced by her collaboration with composer Christian Balvig. Rather, the singer embodies the sculptor, chiselling emotion from jagged sound, unearthing a fleeting poignancy and immortalising it in music. We have all walked its corridors, but In This Room is a place to reflect. I implore you to enter.

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