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OWEN


Albert Alan Owen was born in Wales in 1948 to parents of Welsh and Latvian heritage. His family later moved to Zimbabwe, where his father took up a teaching position. There, Owen was deeply influenced by local music and culture, while also exploring American RnB and jazz. It was during this period that he became acutely aware of the harsh inequalities under British colonial rule, which instilled in him a lifelong aversion to discrimination and racism.
In 1967, Owen returned to Europe to pursue his studies and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He went on to spend time in Paris, studying composition with the eminent Nadia Boulanger and piano under Jacques Février, a favorite pianist of Ravel’s and Poulenc’s. Owen's focus shifted almost entirely to composition, and the acquisition of a Fender Rhodes electric piano marked the beginning of a divorce from his classical Western training. This transition allowed him to merge his passion for African and African-American music with the impressionistic styles of Ravel and Debussy while exploring the innovative realm of electroacoustic composition.
These formative experiences framed Owen’s career as a composer and educator at the Royal Academy of Music and London’s Working Men’s College. He eventually returned to Wales, where he continues to reside.
In 1979, 29-year-old Albert Alan Owen released "Keyboards & Strings", a light magical chamber music masterpiece. Transcending the formal conventions of its era, Keyboard & Strings is an acoustic and electric piano piece, where the violin is met by synths and electronics.
As is often the case in Albert Alan Owen’s most intimate works, there is a sense of ethereal beauty that emerges from the music, akin to the emotional state one might experience while contemplating a Félix Vallotton landscape or the unfathomable mystery of dawn’s first light.
Quiet, profound, and immersive, "Keyboard & Strings" stands out as an electronic-age tone poem, a rare gem that transcends time and place.
TRACK LISTING
A1. Mysteries I
A2. Mysteries II
A3. Mysteries III
B1. On Muted Strings (a)
B2. On Muted Strings (b)
B3. On Muted Strings (c)
B4. On Muted Strings (d)
B5. On Muted Strings (e)

Almost entirely acoustic, ‘Island’ begins with 13 darkened chords and was recorded live at Abbey Road Studios with the London Contemporary Orchestra. The introduction is the sound of waking up alone and on the shore of a strange land. What follows is a shimmering and luscious orchestral album that draws across the full breadth of Pallett’s discography, from ‘Heartland’’s Technicolor to the glittering, fingerpicked guitar that marked Pallett’s first records with their trio, Les Mouches.
In addition to Pallett’s Grammy Award-winning work with Arcade Fire, Pallett’s commissions have included string, brass and orchestral work for Last Shadow Puppets, The National, The Mountain Goats, Christine and arrangements for Frank Ocean, Caribou, R.E.M., Linkin Park, Sigur Rós, Taylor Swift and the Pet Shop Boys.
Since the release of ‘In Conflict’ (2014), Pallett has earned an Oscar nomination for their film scoring work on Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’ and an Emmy for Sølve Sundsbø’s ‘Fourteen Actors Acting’. Their score for Matt Wolf’s ‘Spaceship Earth’, a documentary about a crew who spent two years quarantined inside a replica of Earth’s ecosystem called BIOSPHERE 2, is out now.
TRACK LISTING
---> (i)
Transformer
Paragon Of Order
---> (ii)
The Sound Of The
Engines
Perseverance Of The
Saints
Polar Vortex
---> (iii)
A Bloody Morning
Fire-Mare
Lewis Gets Fucked Into
Space
---> (iv)
In Darkness
Paragon Of Order
(version)
Fire-Mare (version)

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- LP
- £16.99
Usually ships within: 2-10 days - Cat Number
- 37D009LP
- Release date
- 22 May '20
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- CD
- £9.99
Usually ships within: 2-10 days - Cat Number
- 37D009CD
- Release date
- 22 May '20
“I’ve often felt a bit uncomfortable in myself, and I love how that came out in the music,” says Owen. “I don’t really care for songs that flow just right or have a perfect cadence—I’d rather there be some sort of unnerving element to them. I think Aaron and I are both attracted to weirdness in music, and we instinctively went after that without really even talking about it.” For his part, Dessner reflects on the first day of their collaboration: “Eve came up to visit the studio for a day a few years ago when she was 16. I thought we would record one song but we ended up working on several in just one day. By the next morning she had written a few more songs based on her experience the previous day. This prolific songwriting continued throughout our work together. Every morning there would be new songs, written sometimes overnight. I’ve been lucky to work with some incredibly talented artists and it was clear to me immediately that Eve was deeply gifted, expressing herself with such force and sincerity on essentially her first proper recording day at Long Pond. I was spellbound.”
TRACK LISTING
1/ Tudor
2/ Lover Not Today
3/ Mother
4/ After The Love
5/ For Redemption
6/ Bluebird
7/ She Says
8/ I Used To Dream In Color
9/ So Still For You
10/ Blue Moon
11/ 29 Daisy Sweetheart
12/ A Lone Swan

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- Ltd LP
- £19.99
- Cat Number
- SORC1005LP
- Release date
- 27 Apr '18
With sonic similarities to the likes of Richard Thompson (there’s a mind-melting cover of his “Night Comes In” track here, too) and John Martyn, as well as more contemporary troubadours such as Ben Chasny (Six Organs Of Admittance) and Steve Gunn, Tendrils often feels like it’s on the verge of musical collapse, but pulls itself together with delicate and intricate guitar work, gentle vocals and occasional percussion lending it a steady pulse.
The duo released one more CD, this one under the Tendrils moniker, in 1998 on the Half A Cow label, before parting ways. We think this is a very special release which deserves a new appreciation and a 21st-century audience. Both Joel and Charlie are still very active in music (Joel’s other band, Hoss, will be releasing their first album in 20 years on Sorcerer in 2018), but with Tendrils you get to hear the magic they made together circa 1995. This edition comes newly remastered by Mikey Young with fresh artwork design from Luke Fraser and is limited to 500 copies worldwide.

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- CD
- £9.99
- Cat Number
- WEBB485CD
- Release date
- 29 Jul '16
Produced by S. Carey over 18 days last winter at April Base Studios in Eau Claire, WI, the album is Owen’s most inspired and evocative thus far, interpolating a group dynamic into what has long been an intensely intimate sound.
Songs like ‘The Desperate Act’ and ‘Sleep Is A Myth’ remain spare but with a distinctly outward shift in scope, their open-armed sonic range a perfect foil to Kinsella’s evocative explorations of marriage, melancholia and modern middle age.
Fraught with hurt and wry humour, ‘The King Of Whys’ is a portrait of a restless artist grappling with doubt and ghosts of the past but searching for meaning through candour, creativity and an ardent need for emotional release.
TRACK LISTING
Empty Bottle
The Desperate Act
Settled Down
Lovers Come And Go
Tourniquet
A Burning Soul
Saltwater
An Island
Sleep Is A Myth
Lost

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- CD
- £7.99
- Cat Number
- SACG004
- Release date
- 25 Feb '08