MATTHEW BOURNE
Montauk Variations
BAY77
The Leaf Label 2012
17 Tracks. 56mins32secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

Matthew Bourne has spent the last ten years working on many different projects and touching on quite a wide array of genres, but he has, until now, never released any solo record. Inaugurating what is announced as an on-going collaboration with The Leaf Label, with additional projects announced for the next eighteen months, this is exactly what he is doing with Montauk Variations, an album which began its gestation during a short visit to Montauk, NY a couple of years ago, and a subsequent realisation that all he needed to do was strip his music back down to its bare essential: him and a piano.

The album was recorded during three two-day sessions between May and June of last year in Dartington in Devon, Manchester and Wharfedale in North Yorkshire, and features sixteen piano improvisations, for the most part fragile romantic pieces, sometimes so scarce that they at times seem like in suspension. Continue Reading »