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MATTHEW BOURNE

Matthew Bourne

Irrealis

    Matthew Bourne follows 2017’s Isotach album, and recent collaborations with Keeley Forsyth and Nightports, with a collection of prepared piano pieces.

    Irrealis was recorded in a single session, each take played as live without any overdubs. Having taught himself the basics of prepared piano by throwing confectionary into his school’s instrument, elements of these experimentations played a key role in Bourne’s early performances. This culminated in an infamous performance piece which saw the explosive musical demolition of an upright piano with a sledgehammer.

    Far from the staid academic process the discipline is often approached with, Irrealis sees a restless improvisational musician explore the possibilities of his instrument with a box of nuts, bolts and Blu-Tak, and a sense of playfulness and spontaneity.


    TRACK LISTING

    Shri
    Asaf
    Dušan
    Jane
    Laurent
    Alice
    Armando

    Nightports With Matthew Bourne

    Nightports With Matthew Bourne

      Nightports is based on a simple but unbreakable rule of restriction: only sounds produced by the featured musician can be used. Nothing else. These sounds can be transformed, distorted, translated, reworked, processed and reprocessed, stretched, cut, ordered and reordered without limitation.

      Nightports was established by musician-producers Adam Martin (based in Leeds) and Mark Slater (Hull), and Nightports w/Matthew Bourne is the first of a series of collaborative albums to be released by The Leaf Label. Material for the album was recorded at Bourne’s home outside Keighley, West Yorkshire, and at Besbrode Pianos in Leeds. The recordings coax hitherto unheard sounds from a range of contrasting instruments - decrepit dusty uprights holding their own against the attack and precision of a modern concert grand. The lines between the source material and the manipulations are seamless, delivering an unexpected percussive drive and emotional impact.

      The audiophile vinyl edition is half-speed mastered and pressed at Optimal in Germany Packaged in an intricate die-cut sleeve, the vinyl also includes a CD of the album The Nightports project follows Matthew Bourne’s beautiful skeletal piano and cello album "Isotach", which picked up four star reviews in Mojo and The Guardian and support from Mary Anne Hobbs at BBC 6 Music The album will be preceded by digital single "Exit" on January 5th Material from Nightports w/Matthew Bourne was premiered on three pianos with live manipulations at Middleton Halll as part of the Hull City Of Culture programme Nightports have picked up support from Gilles Peterson, with a track featured on the "Brownswood Bubblers 11" compilation. Very much in demand as a collaborator and co-conspirator, Bourne has his fingerprints on a huge number of projects, having worked with artists as diverse as John Zorn, Annette Peacock, Nostalgia 77, Amon Tobin and Broadway Project For fans of Nils Frahm, Hauschka, O?lafur Arnalds.


      Matthew Bourne

      Isotach

        Following his celebrated 'Moogmemory' project, Matthew Bourne returns to the piano for Isotach. Once again, spontaneity is the keyword where Bourne is concerned, catching on tape that pregnant moment when a piece begins to form. Skeletal piano motifs, an aching use of space and sparin g cello arrangements are deployed to devastating effect.

        Recorded in his rural North Yorkshire home, Bourne’s piano placed to overlook the moors while he works, the album title is a nod to the weather, which played a part in its creation. The recordings took place during what Bourne describes as “extreme weather” . If you listen carefully you can hear the wind and rain picked up on the microphones, the sparse instrumentation providing the calm in the eye of the storm. Isotach is Bourne’ s first full length solo piano album since 2012’s Montauk Variations The audiophile vinyl edition is half-speed mastered and pressed at Optimal in Germany.

        Vinyl also includes a CD of the album. Both vinyl and CD editions feature a spot varnished sleeve, picking out the weather symbols that represent each track on the album. The title track was originally conceived for the first Piano Day in 2015. Nils Frahm had asked for a contribution, to which Bourne agreed and promptly forgot. 'Isotach ’ was written and recorded with a single microphone, the night before Piano Day. It has now been streamed over 275k times on SoundCloud . 'Candela (For Sascha Heeney)’ was released for Piano Day 2017 .

        The album follows the critical success of the synth-focused works 'moogmemory' and Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited , a visceral live audio/visual experience created to mark the 40th anniversary of Kraftwerk's seminal album, with Franck Vigroux and video artist Antoine Schmitt. Bourne’s first solo studio album, Montauk Variations (The Sunday Times’ Leftfield Album of the Year in 2012), was celebrated for its sense of stillness and serenity, marking an important musical turning point.

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Barry says: Like the haunted prepared piano works of Hauschka or the paddling rolling beauty of Nils Frahm's more ambient works, Matthew Bourne takes the framework of modern classical and injects it with a spontaneity through rhythmic about-turns and fluid time-signature shifts, leading to a truly beguiling wonder. Top stuff.

        'Moogmemory' is the latest album from multi-award winning pianist and composer Matthew Bourne, who has turned his considerable talents to the world of analogue synthesizers.

        Very much in demand as a collaborator and co-conspirator, Bourne has his fingerprints on a huge number of projects, having worked with artists as diverse as John Zorn, Annette Peacock, Nils Frahm, Nostalgia 77, Amon Tobin and Broadway Project.

        Growing from spontaneous improvised live performances, the album took shape in the studio as Bourne explored and moulded the vast sonic possibilities of voltage-controlled oscillators, creating beautiful, brooding landscapes of thick impasto and translucent sunbursts.

        The seed for this project was planted when Bourne acquired an uncooperative 1982 Memorymoog, having it painstakingly modified and upgraded by Rudi Linhard in Germany .

        Created without the use of computers or sequencers,Moogmemory is the first album to be recorded using only the Lintronics Advanced Memorymoog.

        Bourne will tour moogmemory in collaboration with brilliant visual artist Michael England, who has worked with Autechre, Bola, Leila, Demdike Stare and many more.

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Barry says: Bringing to mind the more ambient, beat-less works of Alessandro Cortini (or indeed Nine Inch Nails), or the early electronics-heavy compositions by Nils Frahm ; Moogmemory is unsurprisingly, unashamed synth-worship. Through the impeccably textured compositions and characteristic, classic sound of a legendary instrument, this collection is breathtaking.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
        2. Alex
        3. Nils
        4. On Rivock EdgeE
        5. B2 Sam
        6. B3 Andrew
        7. A3 Horn And Vellum
        8. B4 Daniziel
        9. I Loved Her, Madly

        Franck Vigroux & Matthew Bourne

        Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited

          Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited is a stunning reimagining of Kraftwerk’s seminal album, created to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

          The perfect (post) Christmas gift for discerning fans of cutting edge analogue electronica. And Kraftwerk!

          Radioland was initially devised as a breathtaking audio-visual live experience by the Anglo-French trio of Matthew Bourne (synthesisers, voice), Franck Vigroux (electronics) and visual artist Antoine Schmitt.

          The original music has been transformed with hurricanes of modulated electronics, earth-shattering bass frequencies, vocoders ebbing and throbbing and the occasional drop into periods of eerie near-silence.

          Using a variety of vintage analogue synthesisers and electronics, they have recreated the futuristic, industrial world of ominous darkness and dazzling light imagined by Kraftwerk in 1975 and reconstructed in this bold new manifestation for 2015.

          The album is mastered by Denis Blackham, who mastered Kraftwerk’s classic 1974 album Autobahn.

          “A darkly intriguing contemporary spin on the seminal Teutonic band Kraftwerk’s electronic concept… a mix of hard-edged industrial grooves and ethereal, moog-infused soundscapes” - Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise.

          “Bourne, a staggeringly talented pianist, also has an ability to explore the synthesiser’s most Kraftwerkian properties” - John Lewis, The Guardian.


          Matthew Bourne

          Montauk Variations

            Matthew Bourne is the latest signing to The Leaf Label, and Montauk Variations is his first ever solo studio album.

            A phenomenal live performer, Bourne brings a breathtaking physicality to the piano that, once witnessed, is hard to forget (try searching for ‘Matthew Bourne piano’ on YouTube).

            A genuinely unique pianist and composer, whose music straddles jazz, classical and rock, Bourne uses every imaginable technique to wring the last drop of inspiration from his chosen instrument.

            Montauk Variations represents something of a change of direction for him – an album of beautiful, lyrical solo piano compositions, punctuated by visceral percussive pieces.

            The album was recorded in The Great Hall at Dartington College, Devon in May 2011, with additional recordings at St Margaret’s Rectory in Manchester and Rebel Elements studio close to his Yorkshire home.

            A restless, endlessly exploratory musician, don’t expect him to stand still - this is the first in a series of albums under the ‘Matthew Bourne presents’ banner, with future releases to include an audio-visual project recorded with his beloved Memorymoog analogue synthesizer, and an album with vocalist Seaming To under the name Billy Moon.


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