‘Rivers and Streams’ will be released by Erased Tapes in LP/CD/DL format on November 27th, 2015.

Pre-order LP/CD/DL here: www.erasedtapes.com/store/index/ERATP077
or digitally on iTunes here: http://snip.ftpromo.net/riversandstreams

Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk has often felt that his unique Continuous Music playing is akin to water – flowing and ever connected. As he further developed his technique, and the more the notes flowed, the closer to water he felt. “I found my hands and arms and everything inside them changing from normal muscle and flesh to well... water.”

With his latest album, ‘Rivers and Streams’, Lubomyr focuses deeply on this connection to water, to the point where the music itself begins to embody its liquid form. Produced by Robert Raths and Jamie Perera, the album flows seamlessly from the live recordings of ‘The Pool of Memories’, captured in a church, to pieces entirely born in the studio, such as ‘Sunshimmers’ and ‘Ripples in a Water Scene’, which feature Perera on acoustic and electric guitar.

Amorphous, ever-changing, Lubomyr as performer becomes subsumed into the natural ebb and flow of the keys as the album drifts between nascent upstream trickles and deeply reflective passages through winding river valleys. The album reaches its climax in ‘The Amazon’, a 20-minute piece dedicated to the world’s largest river. Raths invited Korean flautist Hyelim Kim to guest on the first part, before Lubomyr closes the album with cascades of arpeggio figures, stretching across the breadth of the keyboard with rapid virtuosity.

Following on from 2013’s ‘Corollaries’ album and last year’s ‘Evertina’ EP, Lubomyr’s latest offering compounds upon his existing fluid signature style, and breathes an organic vitality, both nuanced and thoughtful. 

"In the body of the Continuous Piano Master, the fingers and the hands turn into Water, Air and Stone. These are the three manifestations of the Continuous Technique. And for the Continuous Pianist, the fingers physically transform the music into one of these three elements.

The greatest of all miracles in the universe is Water. It is also, I believe, the rarest of all physical things in the universe. Water is the most magical and the most mysterious of all things we know! And so I dedicate this album to the Rivers and Streams of this world – in gratitude for their Beauty!“ – Lubomyr Melnyk

The cover artwork shows the surface of vines captured with macro photography by French artist Marion Benoit, which Lubomyr discovered in early 2015 as the perfect visual counterpart.

TRACK LISTING:

1. Parasol
2. The Pool of Memories
3. Sunshimmers
4. Ripples in a Water Scene	
5. The Amazon: The Highlands
6. The Amazon: The Lowlands

OFFICIAL WEBSITES: lubomyr.com · erasedtapes.com · marion-benoit.com

Rivers And Stream

Parasol

Lubomyr Melnyk – Parasol (excerpt)

Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles has announced his fourth full length album 'Persona' will be released on 13th April via Erased Tapes.

The title 'Persona' was inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s film of the same name, specifically a shot in the opening credits of a child reaching out to touch a woman’s face on a screen, which is shifting between one face and another. This powerful image struck Ryan and it inspired the album’s main theme — an exploration of the persona, the difference between how we see ourselves and how others see us, the spaces in between; between states, people, light and dark, the inner persona and the outer persona. 

"My music is generally is generally inward looking. I like finding something about the self within music, that doesn't have to be specific but maybe asks something or reveals something. This record is a continuation on the self through electronic sounds. Like Legowelt once said ‘a synthesiser is like a translator for unknown emotions’, which I think sums up what I am trying to do. I think all these emotions we have make up our persona. So in a way by finding new ones you alter or expand your persona. And that is what I want my music to try to do. I deliberately aimed to be more sonically diverse with this record. I wanted to experiment more. I wanted to create new sounds and new emotions.”

Recorded at his studio in south-east London, ‘Persona’ benefits from Ryan’s exploration of a dynamic production process that combines analogue-heavy synthesisers, acoustic and electric instruments with a shoegaze-level obsession with effect pedals. A greater depth of emotion and confidence can be heard across the album. From the deconstructed movements on ‘Unfolding’ that starts the album with a snap of delayed snares, the apocalyptic drones of the title track and thundering drums in ‘Phantom Grip’ to more  restrained ambient feels of ‘Dreamer’s Wake’, ‘Rest’ and ‘Untravel’. The latter transverses six beatless minutes of undulating melodies representing “a limbo space, a feeling of ennui, of not really ever being known to others and others not ever really being known to you”.

'Be Kind' reveals a musical connection with fellow Erased Tapes artist Nils Frahm, with its minimal approach and improvisational nature. On the more complex sounding ‘I Think So’ Ryan aims to replicate a colour collage with sound. Like a musical kaleidoscope, a flashing and convoluted mass. Written after he saw Slowdive perform live last year, ‘Hidden’ builds from whispers to landscapes of controlled noise. In an interview with XLR8R magazine, Ryan explains: “once you start trying to make a sound loud, then you turn your back on thousands and thousands of sonic possibilities. One of the best things to do is to start a track with a really quiet, weak sound.” Taking this idea to its ultimate conclusion, ‘Fragment’ closes the album as an innocent sounding ambient piece, almost nursery rhyme like, yielding time for reflection on how the persona has changed.

'Persona' follows the success of a series of releases — the ‘Odyssey’ and ‘Sonne’ EPs, long player ‘Howl’, and 2016’s mini album ‘Night Melody’ — that saw Ryan mature into what Pitchfork has called a “forward-thinking electronic musician with his own ideas about sound”. Atypical of instrumental-electronic music, Ryan has achieved a signature sound that’s unmistakably identifiable as Rival Consoles. Going beyond typical electronic music production, Ryan defines it as “songwriting with an electronic palette of sounds”.

The increasingly dynamic live audio-visual show, born from bespoke performances at the Tate and for Boiler Room at the V&A Museum featuring self-programmed visuals in Max/MSP, has propelled him to play around the world. Ryan launches ‘Persona’ at London’s XOYO on 12th April with further dates to be announced.

Persona

Unfolding

Buy 2LP/CD/DL

Rival Consoles - Unfolding

Waves

I love this record from Isolée, and I was listening to it late one night in the studio and felt inspired to add some electric piano!

I play Ghost Notes, London on 7th, February. Tickets here > bit.ly/2AIyNvn

Isolée - Beau Mot Plage (Neil Cowley Piano Overdub)

I'm back with another piano overdub! Earlier on in the year @rivalconsoles delivered an amazing remix of 'Weightless', so it was only right I returned the favour and did my thing over his track 'Ghosting' 🤘

Rival Consoles - Ghosting (Neil Cowley Piano Overdub)

no one uses Soundcloud, but this is my piano music

Waves

Joseph Patrick Murphy

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