​HAND TO MOUTH TO is a newly reimagined live performance commissioned by Outlands Network and Full of Noises. The starting point for this new production is the EP HAND TO MOUTH (FatCat Records/130701). Released In May 2025. Keeley Forsyth accompanied by long time collaborator Matthew Bourne, crafted a subtly contemplative collection of stripped back songs, focusing upon the minimal ingredients of the voice and piano. What manifested between the two friends is a beautifully considered investigation of restraint and space.

 

Forsyth has taken this opportunity to invite new collaborators into the process of recontextualising the songs into an alternate live form. Acclaimed French author Jean- Baptiste Del Amo (The Son Of Man, Animalia, Fitzcarraldo Editios) has provided a specially commissioned short story titled The No-End House, in response to the 2025 EP. We now find the song suite interspersed among Del Amo’s story. A piece charged with distressing memories, human frailty, regret and longing. What results is an experiment between song and theatre monologue, between gig and play, where new causalities and associations are made between Del Amo’s narrative and the song cycle.

 

Additional musical accompaniment for these shows is provided by Polish cellist/composer Resina and British cellist Colin Alexander, who have developed elements of Matthew Bourne’s original compositions as well as adding her own ideas, sounds and sensibility to the pieces. The story sections themselves, read by a voice modulated Forsyth, are cloaked in a dark ambience of drone and field recordings provided by Forsyth’s collaborator and producer Ross Downes.

 

What results is a compelling and tense performance, where memory floods and plagues the present. As with Forsyth’s previous works, the objective is to build a concise sound world that seems to oscillates between challenging and comforting its audience.

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HAND TO MOUTH TO will be performed at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House, London on the 23 September and at Sonica Festival in Glasgow on the 27 September.