MONTY ADKINS: Four Shibusa (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Apr 25th 2012 01:05 am

Monty Adkins: Four Shibusa

MONTY ADKINS
Four Shibusa
AB40
Audiobulb Records 2012
04 Tracks. 43mins22secs

Over the course of his career, which spans over nigh on twenty years, British composer and sound artist Monty Adkins has progressively stripped down his sonic spaces to now work with an extremely restricted palette from which he draws deeply atmospheric minimal compositions. His work has led him to create music for art installations and answer commissions from choreographer Wayne McGregor, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival or the prestigious INA-GRM in Paris. He has also collaborated with a vast number of artists, including AGF, Mira Calix, Vladislav Delay, Tim Hecker, Robin Rimbaud or Christian Fennesz, and has released five solo albums.

Four Shibusa is the result of a year-long collaboration with long-term friend and visual artist Pip Dickens, based on the Japanese principles of ‘shibusa’, which focuses on simple, beautiful aesthetic in everyday objects. Continue Reading »

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INTERVIEW: MONTY ADKINS Composing Layers

themilkman on Apr 17th 2011 11:48 pm

INTERVIEW: MONTY ADKINS Composing Layers

With his latest album, British sound artist Monty Adkins has been finding inspiration in the painting of Pip Dickens and art collective Brass Art, an approach that already partly infused his previous record. Over the years, he has work on various installations, scored dance projects and curated projects for the legendary GRM in Paris. Here, we talk with him about working on a project celebrating the work of Pierre Schaeffer, looking for electronic music in the orchestral works of Ligeti and Saariaho and understanding the process used by Rothko and adapting it to his own work. Continue Reading »

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MONTY ADKINS: Fragile.Flicker.Fragment (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Apr 10th 2011 11:38 pm

Monty Adkins: Fragile.Flicker.Fragment

MONTY ADKINS
Fragile.Flicker.Fragment
AB035
Audiobulb Records 2011
09 Tracks. 53mins49secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

After reading music at Cambridge University, specializing in French medieval and Italian Renaissance music, Monty Adkins became interested in electronic and electro-acoustic music and went on to become a member of the Birmingham Electro-acoustic Sound Theatre, a formation attached to the music department at the University of Birmingham. This led him to work on very diverse projects, from sound installations and scoring for a contemporary dance piece to curating a project for INA-GRM to celebrate the work of Pierre Schaefer, the man widely regarded as the father of musique concrète.

Adkins’s last record, Five Panels, recorded with bass guitarist Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, was inspired by the paintings of Mark Rothko. Equally, his latest opus finds its source in the work of London-based painter Pip Dickens and that of Brass Art, a collective of artists based in Manchester (Chara Lewis), Huddersfield (Kristin Mojsiewicz) and Glasgow (Anneke Pettican). Continue Reading »

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