Satellite Fingers craft a piano-driven emotional whirlwind on Lockdown Melancholia Vol I
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21.01.2025

Satellite Fingers craft a piano-driven emotional whirlwind on Lockdown Melancholia Vol I

satellite fingers
Words by Bryget Chrisfield

This four-track EP calls a Leonard Cohen lyric to mind: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” 

Four years ago, Bernadette Butterworth sat down at the piano, hoping to process and shift her own lockdown melancholia (hence the title). Then synapses fired with the beginnings of Once There Was Light – inspired by the Jane Kenyon poem it shares a title with – and her neoclassical piano venture, Satellite Fingers, was activated. 

A serene tone is established immediately here. As Butterworth’s gently lilting piano chords escalate, her sister Jessica’s elongated strings swoop in to mollify the tempest. This is also the case with previous single Universal Flow – a hopeful, strings-enhanced piano meditation.

Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.

Opener Anxiety Anthem’s recurring keys motif – which evokes Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (the theme song from 1973’s cult-status horror film, The Exorcist) – is broken up with moments of reassuring ease.

As fluttering keys sweep through Leaf On The Wind, its waltz tempo livens, contrasting the sustained string arrangement. 

In the absence of lyrical messages, instrumental music seems to have an inherent ability to awaken memories lodged deep. The allure of melancholy infuses all four of these piano-and-strings creations, which can move you to the core and unexpectedly dislodge trapped emotions.

But rather than a morose listening experience, Lockdown Melancholia Vol I is inspired, thought-provoking and therapeutic; ideal for quiet contemplation about the things you love and long for.  

Satellite Fingers morphs into an audiovisual project for live performance, with Mark Datiles projecting responsive digital visuals.  

LABEL: INDEPENDENT
RELEASE: OUT NOW