MURMURA
Territories of moving image, ambient metal music and dancing with wild folk at it’s heart;
multidisciplnaire husband and wife duo Al H M Simmons and Hayley J S Matthews
In this duo Al is drummer, guitarist, drone player, photographer and cinematographer. Hayley is dancer, flutist, vocalist, imaginer.
Murmura spawns from a strong need to be re-created; to re-create worlds; for our bodies, minds, connections and landscapes to be re-stored. Giving back what has been lost to it's origin. From a need for ground from which to make ‘new folk’; folk that crosses boundaries, germinates and cross-pollinates genres, disciplines and traditions; not differentiating ‘folk’ from it’s traditions or from all that comes directly from the grass roots across our world through song, sound, image and dancing, from strong connections with self, land, heart and other.
For this Murmura harvest contemplation, fugitivity, radical simplicity, connections to and becomings of wildness. Their marriage, which falls them endlessly and multidisciplinhood. In attempts to un-damn the rivers of our sensoriality and create webs of new sound, image, atmosphere and dancing, threaded with old veins.
In their making process both Hayley and Al consciously trespass across lines of social unquestioning. Attempting to dismantle disconnection, pre-occupation, defence, and the cementing and holding of seemingly stable realities. As they attempt to re-orient us in sound, image, atmosphere and dance making that comes from across these lines. Hayley calls across with her fugitive, feminist dance practice and movement 'Sanctuary on the Fault Line' and Al seeks his veil crossings as fly fisher and photographer. Both harnessing spontaneity, trespass, grace, amplitude, litter picking, moving in rivers and woodlands for hours, unpermissed spaces and a commitment to meeting the weather within and without through all seasons.
Together they bring you what they find of wildness. Hoping that this will re-orient your system and other systems in need of re-orientation.
They hope you will be moved, held, carried gently and sometimes loudly to wilder worlds.
Murmura play with live performance and film making and have begun to collaborate with other artists too.
SHOWS:
Imbolc
Imbolc is a 25 minute dark, ambient live performance work. A contemporary folk and ambient metal nocturne on flute, drums, drone, dance and electric guitar. Grown from the moment in the year that spring thunders inside deep winter, and inspired by the deep night. A photography project shooting the North Sea in the darkness, that developed into a dance, sound and projection show.
Photography, guitar, electronics and dtums: Alistair Simmons
Flute, vocals and dance: Hayley J S Matthews
Music Composition: Alistair Simmons and Hayley J S Matthews
Sound Design: Sean Kennedy
Camera (in recording below): Ruby Phelan
Assistant: Ezra Klarnett Coy
Lake Imbolc
Hayley and Al are currently working on a live indoor show ‘Lake Imbolc’, which integrates the sound score of ‘Imbolc’ above, with the live choreography of Hayley’s Lakes of Anima, creating an hour long territory. The two are walking the UK coast creating field recordings and film for projections, while expanding into what this show is going to be. And will be in a final production week in August 2023 at Norwich Stage Two. There will be a small invited audience to close this production week, press are welcome, write to to us here.
Burial of the (witches) women
Just made and premiered at Meditatio, London, September 13 2025. Burial of the (Witches) Women is made together with Jocelyn West (vocals, harmonium, fiddle), Marina Avetisyan (vocals, base, bell, xylophone), Alistair Simmons (drone, guitar, distortion), Hayley J S Matthews (vocals, flute, dance). It is a 25 minute ritual that finally buries the women who were never ‘witches’ and calls their goodness back among us, and the goodness and connection between all of us; shocked, frozen and halted at that time. Recording coming soon.
Murmura is a relatively new iteration. You can view other projects Hayley and Al have worked on here: