A rare, behind-the-scenes look into the pioneering composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Annette Peacock.

“Her music is without time…” A true original, Annette Peacock has lived what seems like multiple lifetimes starting from the early ’60s touring with free jazz legend Albert Ayler alongside her first husband Gary Peacock. Somewhere along the way, Peacock also encountered the ’60s psychedelic luminaries Ram Dass and Timothy Leary, whose early experiments with LSD helped Peacock open the gates to “the psychedelic state of mind on the perspective of sound.” Peacock’s 1972 major label RCA debut I’m the One utilized Robert Moog’s nascent synthesizers to process vocals in a wholly unique way merging free-form jazz with swaggering funk rock and wild synth experimentation. The album earned her many fans, including David Bowie and Brian Eno, who both tried to work with the Brooklyn-born artist in the ’70s.

Peacock on working with Eno: “Brian Eno showed up and began to set up his recording gear. He’d asked me to do an album that he would produce for his own label at the time, Obscure. The record would be ‘Obscure 11’. With him I met Rhett Davies at the studio, and Brian asked him “What have you got that’s new?”. And Rhett produced some options that Brian then tweaked, and I thought that this was such a perfect working relationship. I had fantasised about having that sort of connection with an engineer. But the album never happened because Brian and I had a concept disagreement. He wanted to feature my voice and disregard the music environment of the song, where the voice lived, and although he was probably right, that is not what I wanted… Ultimately, the music I was going to record with Brian, I recorded and produced intact, live and as a complete entity. And it became Skyskating, the first release on my label.”

Peacock’s musical accolades go on: She has written or contributed to countless compositions on ECM Records, worked with Salvador Dalí, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Robert Wyatt, Mick Ronson, Bill Bruford, amongst many others, and pioneered her own style of dry, cryptic spoken word (rap?) on cult favorite albums like 1979’s The Perfect Release, which featured members of Jeff Beck’s band. Somehow, she remains an unsung heroine, which is the title of an early ’00s mini documentary centering around the recording of An Acrobat’s Heart, which, at the time, was Annette’s first ECM release in twelve years.

The documentary includes rare footage of Peacock walking through the streets of Oslo, recording at Rainbow Studios, playing on a Steinway & Sons piano, and interviews with Peacock herself and ECM founder Manfred Eicher. YouTube isn’t allowing external embeds for this video, but you can view the documentary in its entirety here.

“It’s easy for people to be influenced by somebody that has a lower profile, a cult following. How would it come back to me? It wouldn’t… but it will. The truth. Everyone knows the truth. It comes out eventually.”