Search Results for "nico muhly"

NICO MUHLY: Drones & Piano / Drones & Viola / Drones & Violin (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Sep 6th 2012 01:21 am

Nico Muhly: Drones & Piano Nico Muhly: Drones & Viola Nico Muhly: Drones & Violin

NICO MUHLY
Drones & Piano
SELUR2
Bedroom Community 2012
05 Tracks. 13mins36secs

NICO MUHLY
Drones & Viola
SELUR3
Bedroom Community 2012
04 Tracks 13mins24secs

NICO MUHLY
Drones & Violin
SELUR4
Bedroom Community 2012
04 Tracks. 11mins02secs

Drones & Piano
Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD
Drones & Viola
Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD
Drones & Violin
Boomkat: DLD

Born in Vermont, Muhly grew up in Providence, Rhodes Island, just north of New York where he now resides., Muhly graduated from Columbia University before receiving a Masters in Music from the world-famous Juilliard School in New York eight years ago. An incredibly talented musician and composer with an insatiable thirst for creation, Muhly has since worked alongside Philip Glass, a composer he admires, and has composed a number of pieces, some of which have been released on Icelandic imprint Bedroom Community (Speaks Volume (2006), Mothertongue (2008), I Drink The Air Before Me (2010)), and more recently, Decca (A Good Understanding (2010), in partnership with Bedroom Community,  Seeing Is Believing (2011)). But what makes his career truly remarkable is that Muhly doesn’t compartment his work, and he can as easily be found arranging orchestral parts for artists as diverse as Antony & The Johnsons, Björk, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Grizzly Bear or fellow Bedroom Community friends Valgeir Sigurðsson, Ben Frost or Sam Amidon.

Nico’s latest venture is a three-part digital release based around the concept of drones around which he develops harmonic structures. Continue Reading »

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The Whale Watching Tour, Sam Amidon, Ben Frost, Nico Muhly & Valgeir Sigurđsson, Barbican Centre, London, 27/09/2010

themilkman on Sep 28th 2010 11:14 pm

The Whale Watching Tour, Sam Amidon, Ben Frost, Nico Muhly & Valgeir Sigurđsson, Barbican Centre, London, 27/09/2010

Bedroom Community, the label founded by Valgeir SigurÄ‘sson, has, for over four years, been a hub of intense collaborative work between the various members of the collective. They regularly work on each others’ records, in various capacities, and often join effort on stage. In the last year, the four embarked on an ambitious tour which has seen them perform across Europe. Originally scheduled for last April, the Barbican performance of Bedroom Community’s Whale Watching Tour was postponed after that Icelandic volcano started erupting, causing chaos in European air traffic. On a prematurely autumnal late September evening, the Bedroom Community caravan finally stopped at London’s Barbican Centre for one of the very last dates with all four members of the collective, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Ben Frost and Valgeir SigurÄ‘sson, accompanied by four additional musicians, Una Sveinbjarardóttir (violin), Nadia Sirota (viola), Brogar Magnason (contrabass) and Helgi Jonson (trombone and vocals) playing in this particular format. Continue Reading »

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Nico Muhly And Friends, Union Chapel, London, 08/05/2009

themilkman on May 11th 2009 12:37 am

Nico Muhly and Friends, Union Chapel, London, 08/05/2009

The Union Chapel, up in Islington, north London, played host to Nico Muhly’s pre-ATP performance this Friday evening, and as the billing suggested, the New Yorker had brought along a handful of friends, including young folk singer Sam Amidon, pianist Thomas Bartlett, who usually officiates under the name of Doveman, Icelandic vocalist Helgi Hrafn and Bedroom Community label head and Björk and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy collaborator Valgeir Sigurðsson.

In the two years since the release of his debut album, Speaks Volume, on Bedroom Community, Nico’s profile has risen greatly. His second album, Mothertongue, released last year, showcased his incredible range much more clearly. Beside his solo work, he’s also orchestrated music for people as diverse as Björk, Antony And The Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and, most recently, Grizzly Bear. Continue Reading »

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NICO MUHLY: Mothertongue (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Jun 3rd 2008 11:26 pm

Nico Muhly: Mothertongue

NICO MUHLY
Mothertongue
HVALUR5CD
Bedroom Community 2008
10 Tracks. 49mins11secs

A year on from the release of his critically acclaimed debut album Speaks Volumes, New York-based classical composer Nico Muhly returns with an altogether more ambitious and visionary record. Entirely based around the notion of language, Mothertongue is a strange and fascinating work which goes beyond Muhly’s previous work and undoubtedly feeds on his brush with various musical genres, most notably with the likes of Björk, Antony & The Johnsons or Bedroom Community’s label head and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson.

Mothertongue is split into three major parts, each recorded with a different vocal artist and making use of the human voice in a particular way. Continue Reading »

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NICO MUHLY: Speaks Volume (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Jan 8th 2007 05:09 pm

Nico Muhly: Speaks Volume

NICO MUHLY
Speaks Volume
HVALUR1
Bedroom Community 2006
07 Tracks. 53mins27secs

Released on new Icelandic imprint Bedroom Community, set up by record producer and Björk collaborator Valgeir Sigurðsson, Speaks Volumes is the debut album from twenty-four year old composer and musician Nico Muhly. Born in Vermont and raised in Rhodes Island, Muhly studied composition at the Julliard School. He has since worked with Antony & The Johnsons, orchestrated the score for The Manchurian Candidate in 2004, collaborated with Björk on Medúlla and conducted the score for Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9, once again working in partnership with Björk. Continue Reading »

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VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON: Architecture Of Loss (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Sep 12th 2012 01:51 am

Valgeir Sigurđsson: Architecture Of Loss

VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON
Architecture Of Loss
HVALUR13
Bedroom Community 2012
10 Tracks. 38mins02secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP US: CD | LP

Musician, composer, arranger, producer, curator, label head… the range of activities covered by Valgeir Sigurðsson is pretty extraordinary. This has led him to work with artists as diverse as Björk, Hildur Guðnadóttir, CocoRosie, Maps, Feist, The Magic Numbers or Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, but it is the small cluster of like-minded musicians and composers (Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Ben Frost, Daníel Bjarnason) he has gathered on Bedroom Community, the imprint he set up six years ago in Reykjavik, Iceland, which constitutes the most exciting and rewarding part of his work. Bedroom Community has always functioned like a collective of artists rather than like a standard record label, resulting in each artist substantially contributing to the work of his stable mates.

Architecture Of Loss, Sigurðsson’s third album, following Ekvílíbrium (2007) and Draumalandið (2010), was originally conceived as the score for a ballet of the same name by American choreographer Stephen Petronio Continue Reading »

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DUSTIN O’HALLORAN: Lumiere (130701/Fat-Cat Records)

themilkman on Feb 16th 2011 01:03 am

Dustin O'Halloran: Lumiere

DUSTIN O’HALLORAN
Lumiere
CD1314/LP1314
130701/Fat-Cat Records 2011
09 Tracks. 43mins18secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP

A grainy, flickery and blurred vision of what could be a heavy curtain of the type you use to find in cinemas before the days of multiplex complexes, upon which is projected a name and a word, LUMIERE, appearing fuzzy and distorted; the cover of Dustin O’Halloran’s debut for Fat-Cat’s modern classical sister imprint 130701 spells things out loud and clear even before a single note has played: this is cinematic music. But, if both the title, French for light, but, more fittingly, also the name of the two pioneering French filmmaker brothers who premiered their first film in Paris in 1895, and the visual shown on the cover, could lead to think that this album pays tribute to the art of cinematography, it is not quite the case. Continue Reading »

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SAM AMIDON: I See The Sign (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Mar 9th 2010 01:09 am

Sam Amidon: I See The Sign

SAM AMIDON
I See The Sign
HVALUR9
Bedroom Community 2010
10 Tracks. 42mins23secs

Amazon: UK: CD | LP US: CD | LP Boomkat: CD

Hailing from a small provincial town in south Vermont, Sam Amidon grew up in a family of traditional folk musicians who have made a life out of performing a wide range of music from the American folklore and teaching old New England stories and songs. Having left his native state and moved to New York, Sam took his musical roots with him, performing old songs, bringing them up to date by creating modern acoustic arrangements. He eventually released his first album, But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted, in 2007. After joining the ranks of the ever excellent Bedroom Community, Sam recorded All Is Well, his second album, with a number of Icelandic musicians, including Valgeir Sigurðsson. The album also saw contributions from Bedroom Community regulars Ben Frost and Nico Muhly, while Sam’s younger brother Stefan played drums on a couple of tracks. Since, Sam has contributed to his fellow label mates’ releases, especially Nico Muhly’s Mothertongue album, for which he provided vocals and played banjo and guitar on The Only Tune, a piece adapted from a disturbing folk song about two sisters that Muhly’s parents used to sing to him as a child.  Continue Reading »

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VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON: Draumalandið (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Feb 24th 2010 10:05 pm

Valgeir Sigurðsson: Draumalandið

VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON
Draumalandið
HVALUR8
Bedroom Community 2010
12 Tracks. 39mins12secs

Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

It is quite a busy time for Icelandic imprint Bedroom Community. Hot on the heels of the stunning debut album by composer and musician Daníel Bjarnason and ahead of the second album Sam Amidon has recorded for the label comes the second album by label head and Bedroom Community collective fundamental member Valgeir Sigurđsson.

Draumalandið (Dreamland) is the soundtrack to a feature-length documentary, also entitled Dreamland, by Thorfinnur Gudnason and Andri Snær Magnason. Continue Reading »

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DANÍEL BJARNASON: Processions (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Feb 3rd 2010 01:09 am

Daníel Bjarnason: Processions

DANÍEL BJARNASON
Processions
HVALUR7CD
Bedroom Community 2010
07 Tracks. 49mins31secs

Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD | DLD

Iceland may be a fairly isolated strip of land planted in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, with a population of just under a third of a million, but it is certainly a fertile land when it comes to music, as it churns new talents with international appeal with insistent regularity. Pop was for a time the main beneficiary of this flow of artists, but increasingly, it is classical musicians and composers who are at the forefront of the country’s output.

The latest to emerge from the Icelandic cauldron is Daníel Bjarnason, a pianist, composer and conductor who studied in Reykjavik and Freiburg, Germany. Signed to Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Bedroom Community, where he joins New York-based Nico Muhly, Bjarnason, 30, is the co-founder and main conductor of the Isafold Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has recorded a couple of albums of modern classical works. He has also worked with a variety of orchestras around the world and, like Muhly, crossed over into the pop/rock realm to work with folk songstress Ólöf Arnalds, singer Pétur Ben or Sigur Rós amongst others.

Collecting three radically different pieces, Bow To Strings, Processions and Skelja, this album, Bjarnason’s debut as a composer, is a particularly vivid and rich example of modern composition at its exhilarating best. Continue Reading »

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INTERVIEW: BEN FROST Colours Of The Night

themilkman on Nov 16th 2009 11:46 pm

INTERVIEW: BEN FROST Colours Of The Night

In the space of just a handful of records, Australian-born musician Ben Frost has defined a very particular sound, which blends in elements of modern classical, metal and electronica into haunting cinematic soundscapes. Although his first album proper was published on Room40 in 2003, it is with his debut contribution for Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Bedroom Community, Theory Of Machines (2006) that he began to receive the attention he deserves. With his latest opus, By The Throat, Frost has developed a much more organic sound, which he developed with a number of collaborators, including Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Swedish hardcore metal band Crowpath, Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara and Icelandic string quartet Amiina. Ben took a few minutes out of his current tour with the Bedroom Community guys to talk to themilkfactory about his many influences, how he got acquainted with Bedroom Community, how he faced the weaknesses in his work and addressed them, and how things are not just black and white. Continue Reading »

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BEN FROST: By The Throat (Bedroom Community)

themilkman on Sep 25th 2009 01:05 am

Ben Frost: By The Throat

BEN FROST
By The Throat
HVALUR6
Bedroom Community 2009
11 Tracks. 45mins53secs

It is really a case of Frost by name, Frost(y) by nature when it comes to Australian-born musician Ben Frost. Currently living in Reykjavik, Iceland, Frost has been spilling his chilling blend of decaying electronica and processed electric guitars since 2001 and has released music on Room40, Dreamland Recordings and Architecture. In 2006, he joined the ranks of Valgeir Sigurðsson’s excellent Bedroom Community and released his third album, Theory Of Machines, an icy collection of battered metal heavily processed through razor-sharp electronics and field recordings.

Three years on, By The Throat throws this broken world on its head and plunges into a dense, dark and threatening network of subterranean galleries, almost permanently subjected to destructive quakes. Continue Reading »

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