Leo Chadburn - Instruments, Words, Silences (1999-2019)

<strong>Simon Bookish</strong> (vocals, piano)
with
<strong>Leafcutter John</strong> (live electronics, vocals, percussion, digital tambura)

This is a live recording of a special performance at St. Mary Magdalene's Church, Munster Square, London, given on the 27th October 2010.

Re-interpretations of the Simon Bookish back-catalogue for the Bösendorfer Concert grand piano, with Max/MSP processing and live transformations by Leafcutter John.

The concert also included the brilliant harpist and vocalist Serafina Steer.

Organised by Markson Pianos to celebrate their centenary.

Recorded by Jean-Raphael Dedieu.



Simon Bookish and Leafcutter John (live at St. Mary Magdalene's)

Cover of John Cale / Lou Reed. Live recording from the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, part of the 'De La Warhol' concert, staged to coincide with the 2011 Andy Warhol exhibition.

Style It Takes - Apartment House & Leo Chadburn (Live in 2011)

Piney Gir - After The Flood (a Simon Bookish Remix)

Crystal Fighters - Follow (Simon Bookish Remix)

Various singles, covers, etc. from the Bookish archives. Including 'Prince of Wales' from David Shrigley's 'Worried Noodles' project, a Pink Floyd cover for Mojo Magazine and the dance oddity 'Terry Riley Disco' turned dance odyssey at the hands of Max Tundra, Capitol K and John Fashion Flesh.

The Trial (Pink Floyd Cover for MOJO)

Terry Riley Disco (Original)

Terry Riley Disco (Max Tundra Remix)

Terry Riley Disco (Capitol K's West End Mix)

Music Go Music - Just Me (Unreleased Simon Bookish Mix)

Download version available from: 
http://simonbookish.bandcamp.com/
...and all other digital stores.

***PRESS RELEASE***

RELEASE DATE:
27th November 2015

RED AND BLUE, the startling new release from Simon Bookish, is a collision between digitally-processed brass and distorted synthesizer drones; atonal electronic pop and drifting field recordings; and spoken word and unearthly vocalisations. Taking as its subject the Cold War ‘special relationship’ between the US and UK governments, it is by turns sinister, strange and mordantly witty, compressing a landslide of musical ideas into a single, 16 and a half minute long track.

Simon Bookish is the pseudonym of Leo Chadburn, British ‘avant-pop’ cult figure and experimental classical composer. In the last ten years, his unpredictable work has found champions in the likes of DJs Stuart Maconie (BBC Radio 6 Music) and Mara Carlyle (BBC Radio 3), and the London Symphony Orchestra (of whom he is an associate composer). RED AND BLUE is his first solo release under the Simon Bookish moniker in seven years, following on from his three concept-driven albums Unfair/Funfair (2006), Trainwreck/Raincheck (2007) and Everything/Everything (2008).

RED AND BLUE can be seen as either a hyper-condensed album, comprising twelve fragmentary songs; an extended, kaleidoscopic single; or an abstract, experimental radio play. The text is inspired by the correspondence between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the twin icons of right-wing politics throughout Chadburn’s 1980s childhood in a UK East Midlands ex-mining town. Thatcher and Reagan's words are fractured and half-remembered in the surreal ‘libretto’, which imagines the two politicians as a pair of ‘televisual spectres’.

RED AND BLUE is also a sister project to artist/director Jennet Thomas’ 2015 film THE UNSPEAKABLE FREEDOM DEVICE, for which Chadburn wrote the score. Thomas’ film, commissioned and exhibited by the Grundy Gallery in Blackpool, is a darkly funny science fiction fantasy, based on the idea of a futuristic ‘cargo cult’ of Mrs. Thatcher. It was threatened with a ban and temporarily postponed by local councilors (citing purdah and political bias), provoking a debate about censorship across the UK arts press. RED AND BLUE deploys soundscapes and recordings not included in the film, besides expanding on certain musical themes from the score.

LABEL:

Library of Nothing (www.libraryofnothing.com)

FORMATS:

Digital (iTunes / Spotify / Bandcamp / Etc.)

Red and Blue [EP]

From the archive - Remix from 2011 - not released, hence unmastered.

It was an attempt to turn the moody original into a rather harsh, metal robot / Steve Reich fantasy.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Greenwich Mean Time (Unreleased Simon Bookish Mix, 2011)

My analogue synth version of a John Dowland classic, prepared as part of the sound track to Jennet Thomas' wild film 'The Unspeakable Freedom Device' (2015).

John Dowland (arr. Chadburn) - Earl Of Essex Galliard

Leo Chadburn - Malcolm McLaren Love and Hate (Live) (2016)

Leo Chadburn - Bibas Was Bombed (Live) (2016)

Recorded in 2002 and finally released “from the vaults” in 2013, EPIGRAM / MICROGRAM (CZ) is a small expedition to the heart of a synthesizer and creative monomania. All seven tracks use nothing but the sounds of the Casio CZ-101, with its characteristic digital fizz and shimmer, to create spacey instrumental synthscapes.

While the album has just one sound source, each track explores one compositional idea – they are not conventional song forms, but “aphorisms” driven by an attention to texture and harmony. For example, “Things You Can’t Hear, Things You Can’t See” is concerned simply with one chord incrementally melting into another. On “Theme and Deviations” the harmony shifts sequentially through every key. They’re studies – tiny journeys into what happens, artistically, when you restrict the material and focus the beam of the working methods. A kind of sonic microscopy.

Seven track mini-album.

Written, performed and produced by Leo Chadburn
Additional production by Tom Haines
Design by Daniel Kluge

Things You Can't Hear, Things You Can't See

Steganography

Cosmosynth!

Live performance by EXAUDI
LSO St Luke's, London, 23 October 2016

Commissioned with funds provided by Britten-Pears Foundation and supported by City, University of London.

'Deltiology: the collecting and study of picture postcards.'

These songs are settings of messages written on postcards by twentieth-century British holidaymakers and travellers. Each message is 'framed' by a melody and a sequence of electronic drones. In among the inevitable accounts of the weather, food and journeys that take a turn for the worse, there are fleeting insights into the lives and personalities of these (almost) anonymous people. Communicated through the subjectivity of song, perhaps the words paint a more vivid picture of place and time than the photographs.

Leo Chadburn - Affix Stamp Here (2016)

Apartment House & Leo Chadburn performing covers of songs from Lou Reed and John Cale's 'Songs For Drella', their 1990 tribute album to Andy Warhol.

Apartment House performed this as part of a concert, 'De La Warhol', at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, to coincide with their major Warhol exhibition in 2011.

Hello Its Me - Apartment House & Leo Chadburn (Live in 2011)

Trouble With Classicists - Apartment House & Leo Chadburn (Live in 2011)

A Dream - Apartment House & Leo Chadburn (Live in 2011)

Images - Apartment House & Leo Chadburn (Live in 2011)

Open House - Apartment House & Leo Chadburn (Live in 2011)

Small Town - Apartment House & Leo Chadburn (Live in 2011)

This is my version of New York-based composer Travis Just's "Paul Pierce" (2011). The performers in this studio version were Laura Moody ('cello), Chris Branch (synthesizers) and me (vocals).

In March 2015, I performed this piece around the UK as part of a tour entitled "The Text Message" (supported by Sound and Music). All of the featured music addressed, in some way, the use of words in music, found text, and unexpected uses of language - other works included Jennifer Walshe's "A Folk Song Collection," Peter Ablinger's "TIM Song," Yannis Kyriakides' "Words and Songs Without Words" and my own "X Chairman Maos".

Travis Just - Paul Pierce (performed by Leo Chadburn)

Perhaps my voice is on the tape as well?
Pre-recorded or real-time: could you tell?

Perhaps my voice is low down in the mix?
Or maybe your mind is playing tricks?

My Voice

...season two...
...the spires filled with glue...
...high pitched resonances...
...they invested in technology of all kinds...
...they travelled...
...they made karaoke from hell...
...they took their...

Clearly, records indicate you and I were born here
Ambition died here, so I disappeared

Dreadnought goodbyes and silence
Your shark eyes
It's really no surprise

A fantastic piss experiment
Only one recourse for merriment

I put down my drink
Escape into the night
A suburban guilt trip
You could say that I jumped ship
But I didn't jump, I was pushed from it

A fantastic piss experiment
There's nothing left but the sediment

I materialise around the time that day descends
But there's nothing to do here
Go underground or shop out of town?

Fantastic Piss Experiment

The Organ - Memorize the City (Simon Bookish Remix)

Acoustic Ladyland - The Mighty Q (Simon Bookish's Drifting Q Remix)

Alexander's Festival Hall - Upturned in Slow Motion (a Simon Bookish Remix)

Live recording, performance by Decibel at The Lab, Birmingham Conservatoire, 2nd April 2019.

An exploration of the ambiguities of clock time, numbers, mind control, musical 'machines', extra-terrestrial communication and dog behaviour, with unreliable speaking metronomes that the ensemble alternately obeys or counteracts. Written in thirteen movements, which fluctuate between the exuberant and the sinister without warning:

1. "ENTRY"
2. "ACCELERATE"
3. "ZEE"
4. "VOICELESS"
5. "NON-RISSET"
6. "DOG"
7. "REALCLOCK"
8. "OFF (DJ SENSIBILITIES)"
9. "SERIES"
10. "VOICED"
11. "DICHOTOMIES”
12. "PRINT-THROUGH"
13. "DECCELERATE"

Instrumentation: violin, recorders (soprano/alto/tenor), bass clarinet, baritone sax, trombone, percussion (marimba, vibraphone, wood blocks, crash cymbal, bass drum, dog clickers), piano, electric guitar, bass guitar, playback. Everyone doubles on dog clickers.

Commissioned by Decibel, premiered by them at Cafe Oto, London, 1st April 2019.

Leo Chadburn - ANTICLOCK (2019)

Seb Rochford + Alice Grant - Rini Gave Word (Simon Bookish Remix)

Making sly references to John Cage, James Joyce and the 1852 ballad 'Lilly Dale', Christopher Fox wrote this charming and odd piece for my multitracked voice in 2017. I performed a live version at Cafe Oto and the London Contemporary Music Festival (later broadcast on BBC Radio 3). This new recording is from 2019. 
http://www.foxedition.co.uk

Christopher Fox - His Song (performed by Leo Chadburn)

Simon Bookish (vocals, piano and Casio CZ101

with 

Leafcutter John (live electronics, vocals, percussion, digital tambura)

This is a live recording of a special performance at St. Mary Magdalene's Church, Munster Square, London, given on the 27th October 2010.

Re-interpretations of the Simon Bookish back-catalogue for the Bösendorfer Concert grand piano, with MAX/MSP processing and live transformations by Leafcutter John.

The concert also included the brilliant harpist and vocalist Serafina Steer.

Organised by Markson Pianos to celebrate their centenary.

Recorded by Jean-Raphael Dedieu.

Topography (Live)

Il Trionfo del tempo... (Live)

Invasion (Live)

Crack in Larsen C - segue -  Arborescences (Live)

Metal Horse (Live)

My sour version of Dowland's most famous, most melancholic lute song, prepared as part of the soundtrack to Jennet Thomas' extraordinary 2015 film, 'The Unspeakable Freedom Device'.

John Dowland (arr. Chadburn) - Flow, My Tears

Leo Chadburn is a London-based composer whose unpredictable work includes music for ensembles, music for film and installation art, and solo performances that merge his voice with electronic music. It has been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, 3 and 6 Music. His discography includes seven solos albums, the most recent of which are the spoken word and drone piece The Subject / The Object (2020) and the acclaimed Slower / Talker (2021). 

He was previously also known by the pseudonym Simon Bookish, under which guise he released a sequence of albums of subversive “avant-pop”, alongside remixes for artists including Grizzly Bear, Owen Pallett and Serafina Steer.
 
Much of Leo’s work from the last decade is preoccupied with the musicality of speaking voices. These include Five Loops for the Bathyscaphe (2017) written for the Britten Sinfonia and English Dancing Master (2023) for Phaedra Ensemble. He won an Ivor Novello Award for his piece Freezywater, written for Apartment House, and was nominated for a second award for Affix Stamp Here, written for EXAUDI.
 
His collaborative work with visual artists includes projects with Cerith Wyn Evans (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Marianna Simnett (Serpentine Gallery), Richard Grayson (Matt's Gallery), Jennet Thomas (Grundy Gallery) and Jasleen Kaur (V&A).

Leo Chadburn

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