Bedroom Community, the label founded by Valgeir Sigurđsson, 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 Sigurđsson, 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.

Picked from the four’s respective catalogues, pretty much in equal parts, with no apparent theme or order, the evening demonstrated if needed how intricately linked their work is. While some at times walked off stage when their presence was not required, there was, throughout the evening, a constant exchange of ideas, realised, right from the opening piece, Frost’s Theory Of Machines, taken from the album of the same title, which had the entire ensemble working up a dense soundscape, first from cascading piano and acoustic guitar, progressively beautifully interwoven with crackles and electronics, and at last with heavy stabs of electric guitar as the piece grew bolder. But, as to shake off the dark overtones of this opening piece, Muhly then offered the light, airy and extremely hectic Skiptown, for which he appeared to stretch himself over the entire keyboard of his piano, often playing syncopated lines in the lowest and highest registers at the same time. Later on, inviting Una Sveinbjarardóttir to take centre stage, he offered a beautiful and delicate version of Honest Music, an old piece as he put it himself, which featured on his debut record, Speaks Volume. Muhly’s reading of Keep In Touch later, with Nadia Sirota leading on viola, proved particularly intense, its many fragmented themes crashing into one another, revolving upon themselves to emerge elsewhere transformed, splattered with fragments of Antony Hegarty (unfortunately not present). The piece, which was written over eight years ago and was the coda to Speaks Volume, was getting its long overdue London premiere, as the ever vocal Muhly informed the audience.

With his delicate, yet occasionally corrosive, folk songs salvaged from the traditional American songbook and given a contemporary feel, Sam Amidon is an artist like no other. His wonderful smoky voice manages to evoke both innocence and wisdom, and can at once be soft, silky, harsh and surprisingly powerful. His rendition of songs primarily taken from his two albums for the label, especially I See The Sigh, Pretty Fair Damsel or How About That Blood, in all their fragile appearance, were given much more strength with discreet electronics and instrumentation in the background. It is however his contribution to Muhly’s intense and grandiose The Only Tune, a piece which the pair have been performing live together for some time, and which appears to grow more ambitious, disjointed and abstract as time goes on, which proved once again the centre piece of the evening. The piece, based on a dark folk song which Muhly’s parents used to sing to him as a child, is a roller coster of extremely dense and angular moments, during which Amidon appears at times pushed and shoved by a tempestuous tide or rushing instruments and noises, and much more pastoral sections, allowing, at times, for the song to rise and develop for a moment, often before being once again torn to shred by the rest of the ensemble. In all its complexities,  intricacies and dark theme, The Only Tune is a supremely confident playful piece which truly becomes alive when performed on stage.

Icelandic singer and trombonist Helgi Jonson was invited to take on lead vocals for two of Sigurđsson’s tracks. His take on Baby Architect and Kin stepped away from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s clean vocal interpretation on the original versions and offered instead a much rawer rendering, a times made all the more intense by approximative tuning. The latter especially carried much dramatic effects and pathos, building on Sigurđsson extremely complex and intricate electronic constructions.

Sigurđsson’s recent work for the soundtrack of Icelandic documentary Draumalandið, especially the stunning Past Tundra, also got a good mention during the evening. The orchestral nature of the work was balanced by Sigurđsson’s and Frost’s live electronics, adding a strong element of grit to the overall sound. Grit is an essential part of Frost’s work, and the few tracks that were performed on the evening, taken from his superb By The Throat album, threw a cloak of darkness and icy cold over Barbican Hall. While his music can be extremely delicate and melodic, it often takes very little to bring down distortions, statics and noise, and it very much was the case during the performance. The haunting wolf howlings that chilled the air a number of times through By The Throat were reproduced, with limited success, by Brogar Magnason on the contrabass, but this took away none of Frost’s impressive sound formations.

All throughout the evening, the chemistry between the four was palpable, made clear not so much by big demonstrations as by discreet glances and affectionate gestures during instrument swap on stage. Muhly, thanks to his natural ability at speaking openly in public, appeared to take on the role of master of ceremony. His often light-hearted and casual approach often helps take the edge of much more serious events, yet here, it proved equally as appropriate, offering the music for what it is, and what the Bedroom Community quartet had clearly come over for, something to be enjoyed thoroughly and without restrictions.

Bedroom Community

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.

Playing on a piano which he later described as ‘crazy out of tune’ and ‘honky-tonk style’, Muhly opened with an impressive and somewhat tensed piece, entitled Skiptown, written as a reaction to the news of a friend leaving New York. Great fluid gestures and lively facial expressions served to highlight the many twists and turns of the piece, and set off the show on a particularly complex and enchanting note. Following the performance of a violin piece by a young British musician, Muhly invited Helgi Hrafn on stage for a performance of Wonders, originally featured on Mothertongue and written to suit the singer’s extraordinary range. The piece, stretching well over the ten minute mark, goes through a number of phases, some quiet and peaceful, some much more tempestuous and intense. Live, it had even more vibrant hues, and the contrast between the various sections appeared greater. At times, Hrafn’s voice was a mere spec of dust, carried around by the force of the music, while at others, it beamed through to become the main focal point. Always though, Muhly was there, playing, directing, in control of his troop, whilst sharing jokes with Bartlett.

The pair then performed a piece of electronic pop which was composed for a common project, before Sam Amidon took his place centre stage for three traditional American folk songs, bringing a touch of gentleness to the show. His smokey voice sliding along the soft acoustic guitar tones of Saro first, then All Is Well, the title track from his solo album from last year, and finally Falsehearted Chicken, while Muhly and Bartlett provided delicate piano brushes, Sigurðsson some light electronics and Hrafn some deeper tones on the trombone. Bartlett, in his Doveman guise, also performed three of his own songs, accompanied solely by Amidon, first on banjo, then on guitar. His much more fragile voice and reflective songs signalled yet another change of mood for this most eclectic of evenings, but it once again seemed a perfectly coherent move and had the audience totally engaged.

Muhly, Sigurðsson and Hrafn returned for the last piece of the evening. Based on a story that Muhly’s parents used to tell him as a child, The Only Tune was written for Sam Amidon, and was featured on Mothertongue. Like Wonders, The Only Tune is a complex and demanding piece which tells the story of two sisters, one being pushed in a river by the other. The lyrics are, at times, syncopated and sliced up and slowly build up to become more constructed. At first, Amidon’s vocals were soft and delicate, but grew much more affirmative, and then tensed, up to the point where he found himself pushed to breaking point, his voice totally collapsing for a moment. An intricately layered piece, with once again intense highs and lows, it provided a strong coda to the evening. Muhly returned for a solo encore, playing a melancholic piece, once again written for friends who were moving away from New York, finally bringing this unique evening to a close.

Nico Muhly (MySpace) | Sam Amidon | Doveman | Bedroom Community

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. On Mothertongue, Muhly collates words sung by mezzo-soprano singer Abigail Fischer, phone numbers, address, names of American states or capital cities of countries in West Africa, assembling them into chaotic formations, at times placing them in overlapping clusters of range and tone to give the mind very little other option than to focus on the sound of the voice, and the sound made to form the words, rather than the meaning of the words spoken, and at others spreading them out into more comprehensible groups. While the flow fluctuates over the whole four parts of Mothertongue, it is on the opening two sections, Archive and Shower, that the density is at its most extreme, and if the pace picks up again on the closing part, Monster, words have by then become almost entirely inaudible and redundant, a process started on the third part, Hress.

Wonders, which follows, is quite a different piece. Recorded with Icelandic artist Helgi Hrafn Jónsson, who sings and plays the trombone on the three parts of this composition, which has for starting point a madrigal by seventeenth century English composer and organist Thomas Weelkes. Wonders adopts in part melodic structures and musical forms of the era, especially in its middle section, The Devil Appear’d In The Shape Of A Man, when two vocal lines keep on crossing paths and circle around each other like combatant engaged in a stand off fight, while harpsichord and trombone become more intertwined and cacophonic as this section develops. What starts as quite a benign songs on New Things And New Tidings, becomes progressively more complex and twisted. On A Complaint Against Thomas Weelkes, an anonymous complaint to the bishop of Chichester against Weelkes’s depraved behaviour and bad temper, phrases are sung without apparent leading structure, words delivered in rhythms that go against normal speech, confusing the information further by, once again, focusing on two main vocal lines evolving concurrently.

While presented as the last piece on the album, the whole of Mothertongue is articulated around The Only Tune, and actually began with its recording. Featuring fellow Bedroom Community Sam Amidon, who provides vocals and plays banjo and guitar, this triptych piece is rooted in folk music, with at its core a disturbing ballad about two sisters, one murdering the other, that Muhly recalls his parent singing when he was a child. Declined over The Two Sisters, The Old Mill Pond and The Only Tune, this song, which takes shapes amongst a blend of dissonant electronics and instruments which are progressively streamlined before fading away completely, leaving the bare melodic skeleton carved by Amidon’s banjo at the end of The Two Sisters. As the tale progresses down The Old Mill Pond, Muhly brings back some musical elements, first in powdery form, with occasional found sounds, then with more substantial orchestral layers, until a new dissonance is once again at the heart of the piece. The last part of The Old Tune is much more bucolic, highlighting the contrast between the soft tone of the song and the gruesome story behind the words.

Mothertongue is a much more complex and intricate work than Speak Volumes, and requires much more involvement from the listener, but it is also an astounding tour de force. Here, Muhly brings classic instrumentation, electronics and voices together into a piece of work which is at the forefront of contemporary classical music. Truly magnificent.

4.8/5

Nico Muhly | Bedroom Community
Buy: CD | iTunes

VALGEIR SIGURĐSSON
Eqvílibríum
HVALUR3CD/LP
Bedroom Community 2007
10 Tracks. 49mins10secs

Icelandic musician and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson is best known as a regular collaborator with Björk, having contributed to all her records since Selmasongs, and for recent stints with the likes of Bonnie Prince Billy (The Letting Go) and CocoRosie (The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn). He recently set up his own imprint, Bedroom Community, and has published Speaks Volume, the debut album from twenty-four year old American classical composer Nico Muhly and the most recent output from Melbourne’s Ben Frost.

Eqvílibríum, Sigurðsson’s long overdue debut album is an elegant collection of gentle acoustic pieces tainted with orchestral swathes and discreet electronics textures. If the compositions could appear deceptively simple at first, repeat listens reveal complex and intricate formations which explode in colourful ribbons of sounds, textures and emotions to form the backbone of Sigurðsson’s exquisite miniature tales.

Nico Muhly handles the score here and appears in various capacities (piano, synths, celesta, string arrangements), leading an impressive cast, amongst which Guy Sigsworth, another regular Björk contributor, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Faun Fables’ Dawn McCarthy, Nick Cave collaborator Warren Ellis and Machine Translations’ J. Walker are some of the most high-profile intervenients. Sigurðsson makes good use of this constant afflux of energy. He, who is more often found in the background, guides this exotic ensemble through the meanderings of his imagination.

Although the majority of the compositions collected here are instrumental, vocals occasional materialise and bring an element of human tension into this wonderfully detailed and dense patchwork. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy lends his softly droned torments to Evolution Of Waters and Kin, pushing the two songs into moody corners. Evolution Of Waters especially sounds like a precious stone set against a lush string-laden backdrop of shimmering sub-melodies. There are echoes of Mark Kozelek on Baby Architect as J. Walker weaves surrealist lyrics into Sigurðsson’s wonderful atmospheric pop while Dawn McCarthy brings earthy flavours and emotional grounding to the dramatic Winter Sleep.

As a counterpoint to the rich and vibrant layers of opening track A Symmetry and Focal Points, After Four and even more so Equilibrium Is Restored offer beautiful autumnal textures and melancholic overtones. The latter track is not without recalling some of the ambiences of Ben Frost’s superb Theory Of Machines. The two remaining instrumentals allow for some of the most poignant arrangements and cinematic moments of the record. At just one minute forty, Before Nine serves as an impeccable introduction to the heart-warming Kin, while the intricate shimmering piano and guitar motifs of Lungs, For Merrilee bring this album to a truly inspiring finale.

Despite the many collaborators involved and the ambitious aspect of the project, Eqvílibríum is beautifully understated and subtle and above all deeply poetic. Valgeir Sigurðsson is the most welcoming and thoughtful of hosts and, as he leads his companions through various narratives, he orchestrates one of the most exhilarating and perfect records you’ll hear this year.

Explore: Valgeir Sigurðsson | Bedroom Community
Buy: CD | LP | Download from Bleep.com

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.

Speaks Volumes is a fascinating collection of complex and delicate chamber music pieces framed with discreet electronics. While the seven tracks presented here all share rather austere attires, developed from few instruments at a time, there is, running through the whole album, a deep sense of musicality which gives it a surprisingly light and airy appearance. Although his music can at times seem somewhat serious and conceptual, especially on the textural and moody Clear Music, with which he opens, or on the complex and expressionist Honest Music, Muhly deflects the tention by projecting playful elements at the forefront of his compositions, from the relentless clarinet pursuit of It Goes Without Saying to the swelling waves of piano and celesta fighting out for attention on Pillaging Music.

Elsewhere, Muhly adopts a rather more stern approach on the superb Quiet Music and A Hudson Cycle. Both pieces, interpreted by Muhly on the piano, are short and introspective, but, whereas the former shows strong spiritual and cinematic overtones, the latter is a much more subtle and fragile composition. Originally created as a wedding gift for two friends, the piece is at once melancholic and uplifting and pays a noted homage to the work of Philip Glass, which Muhly cites as one of his most important influences.

The closing track is a much more experimental and intriguing composition. Keep In Touch opens with a lonely viola drawing a pseudo improvised arabesque before being joined by Antony on vocal duties. This is perhaps the most demanding moment on this album, but the dense canvas formed from the alternatively plaintive and abrasive instrument and the mournful hums and hoos, with background electronics progressively adding grit to the mix, serves the intrigue surprisingly well and brings this album to an end in a rather unexpected fashion.

While Nico Muhly has been getting noticed for his work for a while, with compositions performed on both sides of the Atlantic, this first collection, as eclectic and disparate as it is, is certain to raise his profile and put the fledgling Bedroom Community imprint on the map.

Explore: Nico Muhly | Bedroom Community
Buy: CD