Piano Versions

Modern Driveway

Background, context, and transcript highlights here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/06/andy-warhol-bbc-interview-edward-lucie-smith/

Andy Warhol BBC interview (1981)

Stream the single: https://latenighttales.lnk.to/magicseeds-single
Order the ruby 'Magic Seeds' vinyl: https://latenighttales.lnk.to/magicseeds. 
Released 8 November 2024

Experimental producer, composer and vocalist Leifur James announces the release of his third album ‘Magic Seeds’ via Night Time Stories on 8th November. ‘Magic Seeds’ is a rebirth of sorts, and his most collaborative and personal offering yet. 
 
Over the past few years, James has steadily built a reputation as a vital new voice in electronic music on both sides of the Atlantic. He’s played prestigious London venues with European tours to match, including notable nights at Village Underground and the Barbican, gaining support along the way from the likes of Pitchfork, KCRW, BBC 6Music, NTS, Gilles Peterson, Mary Anne Hobbs, Bradley Zero and actor Cillian Murphy. 

His 2018 debut album ‘A Louder Silence‘ defied convention, deftly blending IDM and minimalist avant-garde influences with Nina Simone-inspired vocals and capturing heady nights at London’s long-lost and beloved club Plastic People. A remix EP followed, featuring respected leftfielders including Bruce, FaltyDL and Coby Sey, yet James refused to stay in one lane. ‘Wurlitzer’s’ ominous crescendo of neo-classical piano and sub-bass won acclaim at film festivals thanks to its visual by Hungarian director Balázs Simon, and then came his second, more challenging electronic full-length. 2020’s ‘Angel in Disguise’ garnered attention from the dance music world, earning praise from Mixmag, CRACK and DJ Mag, and culminating in a full performance on Boiler Room.
 
For now, ‘Magic Seeds’ illuminates James as one of those rare composers who is capable of taking listeners to great highs and plunging them into inky depths; moody and moving music that feels equally airy, as if it was composed outside under the moon – which, he jokes, is exactly where he hopes people will listen to it. And though there are tracks that are more songs than soundscapes, he eschews formulas for musical freedom. It’s an ambitious record that could work both in open spaces and in dank clubs – as long as there is a smoke machine, of course. But more than anything, it feels as if it’s living and breathing; a sonic collage of James’s past few years whirled into one.

Leifur James - Magic Seeds

Vocals, Lyrics-  Ola Szmidt
Recording and Mixing- Ola Szmidt
Mastering -  Kieran Hebden
July, 2017

Wrapped

04 Wrapped

Pre-order 'All Together Again' on LP/CD/DL: http://phonofile.link/all-together-again

There is no end to composer Peter Broderick’s creative output, and so we present to you his new album titled 'All Together Again' — available worldwide on November 17th 2017 via Erased Tapes. 

Words from Peter, October 2017:

"Ever since I started releasing records in 2007 (10 years ago now!), people have contacted me periodically to ask if I’d be interested in making music to accompany their projects. Most of these projects have been things like films, dance pieces and theatre plays . . . but every so often I get the odd request for something a little different. Peter, would you write a song for my wedding? My one year anniversary? A ferry boat ride?

In early 2015 I was asked to perform 12 minutes of music during a runway show as part of New York Fashion Week. I agreed and began composing a 12-minute piece which I could perform on my own with a few different instruments and some looping pedals. I made a recording of the piece and sent it over to my contacts at the fashion show . . . but a few days before I was to fly out to New York, they wrote back and told me they actually just wanted me to play a few older songs that they were already familiar with. Feeling slightly disappointed, I shelved the other piece, giving it the title If I Were A Runway Model.

It is with great pleasure that I now present this piece in a collection of commissioned works spanning the last decade . . . it’s All Together Again. This group of oddball works does indeed include a couple pieces written for weddings (Our Future In Wedlock and The Walk), and a song someone asked me to write as a gift for his wife on their first year wedding anniversary (Emily). And indeed, there’s a 17-minute piece written to accompany a ferry boat ride in Istanbul (A Ride On The Bosphorus). A few of the pieces were written for films (Robbie’s Song, Atlantic and Seeing Things), and one for a kind of interactive installation (Unsung Heroes).

In my early days of recording, I took pride in playing all the different instruments myself and doing the recording myself as well. And then at some point I started branching out, working with other musicians and recording engineers. But this record is very dear to me in that it’s a return to that original approach . . . playing all the different instruments myself, working with my limits on each one, and my own limits in recording and mixing. I’ve always held a broad curiosity for all different instruments and all different styles of music, and if nothing else I hope this record will portray that curiosity, and my pure love for this thing we call music. Can you dig it?"

The cover art was made by Peter himself in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, by cutting and sticking different coloured paper fragments to depict the individuality of each track. 

TRACK LISTING

1. If I Were A Runway Model
2. Robbie’s Song
3. A Ride On The Bosphorus
4. Emily
5. Our Future In Wedlock	
6. The Walk
7. Atlantic		
8. Seeing Things
9. Unsung Heroes	

WEBSITE: www.peterbroderick.net

All Together Again

Peter Broderick - A Ride On The Bosphorus

from 'Cycle and Reveal' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den319
available on all formats at http://denovali.com/mariodiazdeleon

Denovali is pleased to present Cycle and Reveal, the fourth full length LP of contemporary classical works by acclaimed composer Mario Diaz de Leon. Featuring bold performances by a cast of longtime collaborators, this compilation is an essential chapter in his celebrated series of recordings for acoustic instruments and electronics.
 
The output of Mario Diaz de Leon defies easy categorization, spanning the worlds of contemporary classical composition, experimental electronic music, extreme metal, and creative improvised music. Working extensively with an inner circle of close collaborators (ICE, Talea, and TAK Ensemble, among others) his classical works have been celebrated over the last decade for their “hallucinatory intensity” (New York Times), “snarling exuberance” (Pitchfork), “helter-skelter, electronically enhanced cadenzas” (New Yorker Magazine), and coupling of “crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (Wire Magazine). 
 
The A-side features two works written in early 2017, which colorfully embrace hypnotic repetition alongside dynamic contrasts and distinctly embody the electrifying post-minimalism that Diaz de Leon is known for. Opener Sacrament is written for a trio of musicians from Talea Ensemble and features the composer’s shimmering, bass heavy electronic production. This energetic piece, driven by the virtuosity of marimba player and Talea executive director Alex Lipowski, makes use of rapid-fire arpeggiations and heavy rhythmic unisons. These are starkly contrasted with moments of reverberant echo, bursts of noise in the flute and electronics, and ecstatic rhythms. Labrys, written for ICE bassoonist Rebekah Heller, builds on the celebrated legacy of solo + electronic works heard on his 2015 album The Soul is the Arena. Built around virtuosic interplay between bassoon and synthesizer, Labrys features shifting and hypnotic repetition alongside expansive melodies and sub-bass frequencies.
 
The B-side consists of two works composed in July of 2016 which draw from primal, incantatory, and improvisatory sonic landscapes. Irradiance, a collaboration with cellist Mariel Roberts, begins with a series of spacious riffs exploring the extremes of the cello’s register and transforms over time into a climactic frenzy of noise loops. Tuning the cello’s low C down to a growling G, Roberts interpreted the sounds of each pre-recorded loop by ear.  The piece gradually builds from cavernous depths into an ecstatic climax of anarchic noise. Concluding track Mysterium is written for the ICE trio of flutist and ensemble founder Claire Chase, clarinetist and artistic director emeritus Joshua Rubin, and bassoonist and current artistic director Rebekah Heller. Archaic melodies, improvised heterophony, spectral transformations, echoes of Klang-era Stockhausen, and the colorful noise of Moog and Ciat-Lonbarde synthesizers combine to create an expansive and wildly ritualistic atmosphere.
 
Cycle and Reveal was recorded in vivid detail by Marc Urselli (John Zorn, Laurie Anderson) at East Side Sound, Stephen McLaughlin at EMPAC, and mastered by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio. Diaz de Leon invited Melbourne-based visual artist Yuria Okamura to design the cover image and inner sleeve symbols. Sharing Diaz de Leon’s interest in the reinterpretation of spiritual art, Okamura’s cover “maps and reconfigures geometric patterns and symbols that reference esoteric symbolism, occult diagrams, religious architecture and decoration.”

Cycle and Reveal

Mario Diaz de Leon & Talea Ensemble - Sacrament

To mark this year’s 88th day and as an acknowledgement to these unprecedented circumstances we find ourselves in, Piano Day founder, pianist and producer Nils Frahm releases a collection of eight solo piano pieces titled 'Empty'. 

Stream and download 'Empty': https://idol.lnk.to/nils-frahm-empty

Conceived of just before Nils broke his thumb and composed the similarly intimate solo piano album 'Screws', 'Empty' is a soothing vessel of eight simple and serene pieces originally recorded as the music to a short art film he shot with his friend and film director Benoit Toulemonde. Drifting through emotions from the stark and sobering opener 'First Defeat', to the gently euphoric 'No Step On Wing' and the contemplative but hopeful closer 'Black Notes', with its poignant minute of silence, 'Empty' is a comforting score for these turbulent times.

“When I came back from the hospital with a broken thumb and listened to the recordings, I felt they were unfinished. I decided to put them aside and started to work on my small album, 'Screws'. 

Many many other notes of the piano have been struck since these days, and before we all forget about this, I thought it would be a good moment to share these lullabies with you. I hope they help you stay all strong and calm in these days of solitude – despite the hardship, we can discover introspection and reflection unexpectedly. Who knows what it is good for.  
 
Much love, Nils”

Empty

No Step On Wing

Stream & order LP · CD

Nils Frahm - No Step On Wing

No Step on Wing

JAMES BLACKSHAW & LUBOMYR MELNYK
THE WATCHERS

IMPREC375

The Watchers is a historic collaboration between Lubomyr Melnyk and James Blackshaw. Both artists are well known as composers but here it is their impovisational skills that are on display.  First 200 copies of the LP will ship on blue vinyl.  CD version is packaged in a heavy duty digipak.

http://importantrecords.com/imprec/imprec375

"Haftorang" by James Blackshaw & Lubomyr Melnyk IMPREC375

This is a melody that keeps recurring. I think one of my older pieces might have used it, but I'm not sure... I'm losing track of the details of my past. Produced in Bitwig Studio.

Andy Warhol BBC interview (1981)

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