Sun, live at Maida Vale December 2013

April 24th at St John's (http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?572955)

Max Ballie (1st violin)
Phil Granell (2nd violin) 
Oli Langford (viola)  
Lucy Railton (cello)
Calum Gourlay (double bass)

Sun (String Quintet Live At Maida Vale)

Arms and Sleepers - 'What Tomorrow Brings'

New album out now on Pelagic Records:
https://orcd.co/armsandsleepers
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Pt. 1 ** Innocence: tracks 1-5
Pt. 2 ** Melancholy: tracks 6-9
Pt. 3 ** Rupture: tracks 10-13
Pt. 4 ** Reflection: tracks 14-17
___________________________________

Contact:
hello@armsandsleepers.com

Press Inquiries:
harry@hanglands.com
jasmine@pelagic-records.com
___________________________________

What Tomorrow Brings

My Home Is A Vessel Floating Through An Abstract Space Towards Ports Unknown

BUY ALBUM

Erased Tapes 17

Quasar

New mini-album 'Night Melody' out August 5th
Pre-order it on 12"/DL: www.erasedtapes.com/store/index/ERATP087
or digitally from iTunes: snip.ftpromo.net/nightmelody
More info: www.rivalconsoles.net

London-based electronic songwriter Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles to release his most personal work to date in the form of a mini-album titled ‘Night Melody’ through Erased Tapes on 5th August 2016.

During the release of his acclaimed full-length album ‘Howl’ and heavy touring in late 2015, Ryan came out of a long relationship and found himself making music throughout the winter months. The result of his efforts is a 34-minute, 6-track mini album ‘Night Melody’, born out of and shaped by long hours working into the night. It’s nocturnal in sound; mysterious in the way that the early hours so often are.

“I found myself, in a silent home, with the days getting dark very early. I’ve never before in my life been affected by the lack of light so much. I just remember it always being night time. I would either make music into the night, go out drinking with friends, or go to parties and dance into the early hours, every day, week after week, month after month, until eventually the days became brighter again.”

The opening statement ‘Pattern of the North’ starts off with a collage of spliced synth melodies, inspired by anxiety that accompanies going home for Christmas. It’s followed by ‘Johannesburg’, an early sketch gradually filled out during his tour in South Africa. 

“After playing it around some of the cities, I got a lot of inspiration to bring it to life and push it into something that really moves me. I think this is one of my most colourful pieces of music, with its driving rhythm and almost a homage to Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ towards the end, with a build of very simple, hypnotic parts. I especially love that for over five minutes the piece is tied to just one note. This makes the ending very dramatic, because all of a sudden there is this harmonic change.”

‘Lone’ started life around the time Ryan was working on his ‘Sonne’ EP in 2014. It’s the result of constant adjustments to find the perfect balance of fragility and assurance. As everything on the album, it’s a carefully considered, emotionally mature piece. “I think, as I get older, I need music to represent something and not just sound interesting, though of course the two are connected.”

The closing statement ‘What Sorrow’ is a fitting end to the album, building from gentle melancholia to a joyous crescendo. It’s a sensibility that’s central to the record; joy and sorrow both find their counterpoints.

“This record is very personal to me and I hope it offers something for other people, as it helped me to make it and to listen to it. Almost every synth line was recorded intuitively, without perfection but with a lot of intention and expression. I’m not interested in making something sad or making something happy. I want music to be bittersweet, to be more complex, like life – containing moments of vibrant colour and hope, as much as darkness and sadness.”

This summer will see Ryan follow on from his recent North American Tour with the appearance at many festivals including Lovebox, Secret Garden Party, La Route Du Rock, Sea Change and Tale of Us-curated Afterlife party at Space, Ibiza. ‘Night Melody’ will be available on 12” vinyl and digitally, August 5th.

TRACK LISTING:  	

A1. Pattern Of The North
A2. Johannesburg
A3. Slow Song

B1. Lone
B2. Night Melody
B3. What Sorrow

Night Melody

Johannesburg

Buy 12"/DL

Rival Consoles - Johannesburg

I'm excited to announce the first track from the 'Emergence Remixed' album which will be released in full at the end of March.

This remix comes from one of my absolute favourite electronic producers of the last few years, and someone who is constantly surprising me with each new release - Rival Consoles. 

I've been playing his work in my sets a lot recently too, he's got a great humanised approach to making electronic music, primarily with his hands-on analogue machines and live percussion, which give his tracks a whole load more life than most other producers. 

I have to mention Rival Consoles synth work too, which for me, is the best out there by a mile. He's got a knack for the most beautiful timbral quality and soft full sound. Complemented with his ability for hooks and chords and always developing arrangements, makes for some of the best electronic music out there in my opinion.

So all that said, you can see why I said I was excited to have him involved in the remix package! He's made a brewing club track for this package, all about those beautiful synths and micropitch deviations for me, the quality oozes out with him needing to overcomplicate the mix (like I do!). It's really hard to get each element to such quality to carry a track like that....so hats off from me, and I hope you enjoy it too.

Loads more amazing remixes coming soon from more of my favourite producers - it's a juicy package! We'll put some out to the mailing list first, which you can join below at the end of this description.

The artwork is by Andy Lomas, from his Aggregation series, where he created a simulation of sticky particles which bounce around and are more likely to stick to larger structures, causing biological-esc growth-like structures to emerge. I have one of his huge prints from this series on my wall, the detail at high res is amazing. 

The series was chose for the Emergence album packages as it demonstrates the same principles of mathematical rules yielding unexpected and beautiful outcomes as is shown in the visual story to which the album tracks were scored. Lots of those videos are on this youtube channel, and the whole thing will be released in surround-sound bluray format later this year.

From 'Emergence Remixed', out March 31
Pre-order 'Emergence Remixed' http://MaxCooper.lnk.to/Remixed
Buy 'Emergence' http://MaxCooper.lnk.to/Emergence
Subscribe to hear the next remixes first, free mixes, gig tickets etc (the "JOIN" button is top right): http://www.maxcooper.net

12"/Download/LP Stream

Distant Light (Rival Consoles Remix) [Mesh002]

I had a lot of train journeys recently and I love watching the wires seemingly dance around outside the window. I wondered if we could be getting fooled by a similar process during our usual experience of movement and time, and thought it would be an interesting project for a music video set to the music created during the same journeys.

You can find that project and a longer explanation of the video ideas here: https://vimeo.com/241546182

For the music I wanted to bring ideas of frozen moments of the past into play, and no better excuse to get stuck in with the Prophet 6 on some lush classic analogue synth sounds for the main chord sequence, and plenty of nob noodling for a dance of modulating sounds around the main sequence. I wanted to keep it fairly sparse to let the chord patch be central, and just focus on trying to make every element, including the percussion, warp a little, so you can either listen to the track from a distance and hear the harmonic ideas, or delve in to find all sorts more hiding in there.

You can hear the whole EP here: https://lnk.to/WorldPassingByEP

Whole EP Stream/Buy

Resynthesis [Mesh004]

Taken from the new album 'One Hundred Billion Sparks', released 20 Sept - pre-order with tour tickets at https://MaxCooper.lnk.to/Hope

After spending a month in complete isolation at a remote cottage in Wales, Max Cooper presents ‘One Hundred Billion Sparks’, his third studio album, in which he interrogates notions of identity whilst profiling the complex mechanisms that make us all wonderfully unique. 
 
The first single of the album, 'Hope', sees Max retain the duality for which his work is known for, dissonant harmonies ring across vast, cinematic soundscapes driven forward by static bass and skeletal percussion. The track was designed around a video collaboration with Thomas Vanz, charting the epic journey of atoms inside the brain, as it creates our experience with its one hundred billion sparking neurons. 

One Hundred Billion Sparks tour:
13 Sep - Amsterdam, Melkweg
15 Sept - Budapest, We Are Cre8tion
20 Sep - London, Koko 
22 Sep - Nantes, Scopitone Festival
25 Sep - Santander, Centro Botin
04-06 Oct - Brighton, ACCA [Aether]
06 Oct - Rome, Spring Attitude Festival, Ex Dogana
12 Oct - Yverdon-les-Bains, L'Amalgame
18 Oct - Paris, Gaîté Lyrique
03-07 Nov – Hasselt, IMPACT [Aether]
08 Nov - Brussels, AB
10 Nov - Berlin, Funkhaus
16 Nov - Dublin, Button Factory
24 Nov - Cologne, Artheater

For tickets, pre-orders and more info go to www.maxcooper.net

One Hundred Billion Sparks

Hope

Full LP-Stream-12"-CD

Taken from Kasper Bjørke Quartets forthcoming album "The Fifty Eleven Project"

Buy Single:  https://KompaktRecords.lnk.to/DurForVitusSD
Pre-order Album: https://KompaktRecords.lnk.to/TheFiftyElevenProjectSD

On October 19th Kompakt presents a new LP and audiovisual venture by Danish producer Kasper Bjørke and close cohorts. Epic and in length but always captivating, ‘The Fifty Eleven Project’ is an entirely ambient concept album, that interprets and evokes the emotional rollercoaster Kasper experienced, from his cancer diagnosis and throughout the five years of regular check-ups. The week of album release marks his second anniversary of getting the all-clear.

The base of the album was composed on vintage analogue synthesizers, reverbs, echo and sequencers – using the computer solely as a recording device – by Kasper and synth wizard Claus Norreen, in the latter’s Copenhagen studio.

The violins, violas and cellos are composed and played by the Italian composer Davide Rossi, who has also worked with Ennio Morricone, Jon Hopkins, Röyksopp, The Verve and Goldfrapp.

The piano parts are composed and played by Danish musician Jakob Littauer (of Kompakt labelmates Jatoma) on an old upright piano in a studio, and on a Steinway Grand Piano in the concert hall at the Royal Danish Music Conservatorium.

From Max Richter’s ‘SLEEP’, Hannah Peel’s ‘Mary Casio: Journey To Cassiopeia’, to much of Brian Eno’s ‘Music For Installations’, ‘The Fifty Eleven Project’ continues in a rich vein of work by contemporary composers which explores a situation/condition, and is made with functionality and healing in mind.

The visual side of ‘The Fifty Eleven Project’ is made in collaboration with the culture laboratory Prxjects and acclaimed LA based artist/filmmaker/photographer Justin Tyler Close, who has created art films for each of the album’s 11 tracks - plus one music video, including clips from all 11 films. The 11 films will be assimilated into a video exhibition at Klub in Copenhagen from 12th – 21st October. The ambition is that the installation will tour Europe and the US in 2019.

Furnished in an exquisite fabric box, this 180 gram 3LP clear vinyl box is presented by cover art created by world-renowned artist Landon Metz, further cementing the release’s multidisciplinary links to the art world.

Buy/Stream

PREMIERE: Kasper Bjørke Quartet - Dur For Vitus

Throwing Snow 
‘Aspera’ 
December 3rd 2012 
Snowfall

Having minted his Snowfall imprint with the acclaimed ‘Clamor’ EP earlier this year, Ross Tones aka Throwing Snow returns on December 3rd for his second EP of 2012, the eagerly awaited ‘Aspera’. As with its predecessor, the title comes laced with Latin rhetoric: “Aspera” translating as “to make rough”, providing an apt description for the aesthetic of the four original tracks on offer. 

From the title track Tones' creative direction is clearly displayed. Hinging round a warming bass, coarse stripped back drums accompany frosty arpeggios and washed out synths atop a bed of hidden strings, whilst on ‘Melum’ flickering percussion, ethereal guitars and throbbing melodic jabs combine with Throwing Snow’s trademark distortion, culminating in an unexpected segment of footwork punctuating the track’s expansive growth.

‘Lingerwell’ sees four knackered piano chords wrapped in warm crackles and hypnotic atmospherics blooming into life with a burst of pulsating stabs, before ‘Behest’ closes the EP with a climactic slugging match of drowned drums, throbbing bass and ecclesiastical synths, and a drop to make even the most atheistic of us think again.

Snowfall is now two releases strong, and having set out with an honest mission statement we are left highly anticipating what will surface next.

For all press enquiries please contact jack@toastpress.com (print) / noam@toastpress.com (online) / 020 7326 1200

Behest

Berlin based composer and producer Ben Lukas Boysen has announced the release of his third album, the progressive and shape-shifting 'Mirage', on 1 May 2020. It follows 2013’s 'Gravity' and the acclaimed 2016 full length 'Spells', a record as much admired by his peers as it was loved by fans that not only yielded remixes from Max Cooper and Tim Hecker, but also opened Jon Hopkins’ Late Night Tales compilation.

Since the release of 'Spells', Ben collaborated with cellist and composer Sebastian Plano on the score for David OReilly’s landmark innovative video game 'Everything'. It was added to the long list for the Best Animated Short at the 90th Academy Awards, making it the first video game to qualify for an Oscar. 

As with 'Gravity' and 'Spells', Ben has an array of musical guests adorning Mirage, including long time collaborator, Berlin based cellist and composer Anne Müller as well as Australian saxophonist and composer Daniel Thorne — for whom Ben wrote parts specifically, having heard his 2019 solo debut 'Lines of Sight'. Lead track 'Medela' features both and takes the listener on a kaleidoscopic journey that slides with ease across sonic terrains.

While on 'Spells' Ben made programmed pieces sound indistinguishable from human playing, with 'Mirage' he set out to do the opposite and make the human touch unrecognisable, creating something of a mystery or a mirage.

“A lot of the elements and instruments you hear on the album are either not what you think they are, or exactly what you think they are but behave differently or they’re elements you definitely know but they are hidden, processed, or morphed into something else. With 'Spells' and 'Gravity' I was trying to hide the machines. On 'Mirage', I’m trying to hide the human” — Ben Lukas Boysen

Mirage

Medela

Order LP · CD · DL

Ben Lukas Boysen - Medela

http://www.dominorecordco.com/uk/albums/28-01-13/rounds-reissue

Unspoken (promo version)

'What Tomorrow Brings'
NEW ALBUM OUT NOW
https://ffm.to/arms-and-sleepers
____________________

Contact:
hello@armsandsleepers.com
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