Leo Chadburn, Slower / Talker
Album information, credits, press quotes and lyrics.
About Slower / Talker
Release date: 26th March 2021 (Library of Nothing Records)
A new album of music by Leo Chadburn, Slower / Talker explores a striking sound-world of drifting piano and transparent string harmonies, bold silences and meticulous, grid-like musical structures, which frame understated spoken voiceovers and fleeting song.
It features performances by two of the world's leading groups for experimental music: Apartment House (UK) and Quatuor Bozzini (Canada), alongside pianist Kate Halsall and the voices of the composer and the actor Gemma Saunders (National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company).
Slower / Talker comprises six pieces, written over the period of a decade. It follows Leo Chadburn's five previous albums of avant pop and electronic music (released under his own name and the pseudonym Simon Bookish).
While the musical palette is restrained, influenced by minimal music, visual art and structuralist film, the texts look out into the world. These encompass a list of seventy names of moth species in The Indistinguishables, a list of topographical features encircling London in Freezywater, the words of Mao Zedong (X Chairman Maos), a reflection on a pioneering journey by deep-ocean explorer Jacques Piccard (Five Loops for the Bathyscaphe), the idiosyncratic vocabulary of the fragrance industry (Vapour Descriptors) and a stream of consciousness on the culture and properties of chemical elements (The Halogens).
Album Credits
Performers:
Quatuor Bozzini:- Clemens Merkel violin
- Xavier Lepage-Brault violin
- Stéphanie Bozzini viola
- Isabelle Bozzini cello
- Mira Benjamin violin
- Gordon MacKay violins
- Bridget Carey viola
- Anton Lukoszevieze cello
- Kerry Yong piano, reed organ and Casiotone keyboards
- Mark Knoop piano
- Simon Limbrick handbell
- Max de Wardener electric bass
- Sam Cave electric guitar
- Gemma Saunders voice
- Kate Halsall voice, piano
- Leo Chadburn voice, piano and Dictaphones
Production credits:
'The Indistinguishables' was produced by Laurent Major and engineered by Vincent Blain. Recorded at Studio Madame Wood, Montréal. 'Vapour Descriptors' was produced by Chris Lewis. Recorded at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, London. Included on this album with the kind permission of Kate Halsall.
All other tracks were produced by John Lely and engineered by Gus White. Recorded at Goldsmiths Music Studios, London.
Additional production and recordings on all tracks by Leo Chadburn. Additional recordings (on 'Freezywater') by Simon Limbrick. Mixed by John Lely and Leo Chadburn. Mastered by Eric James at Philosopher's Barn Mastering.
Press for Slower / Talker
...beautifully surreal... a bold rendering of new minimalism... the synergy between the instrumental and vocal work is luminous and Chadburn purrs through the text...
—Mariam Rezaei, The Wire, June 2021
...Hypnotic and vivid, Chadburn's work asks you to listen, think and imagine. It also has a wry quality that makes you take it seriously...
—Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, April 2021
...This gorgeous collection of works by British composer Leo Chadburn, made over the last decade or so, are all about different sorts of found texts, appropriating words for their musicality and sound. Most of the six pieces are performed by the ubiquitous London ensemble Apartment House, but the ravishing opening piece The Indistinguishables features the luminescent sounds of Montréal's Quatuor Bozzini playing dazzling swells, melodic fragments, and resonant pizzicato beneath the exquisite articulation of actor Gemma Saunders, who recites the common names of 70 types of moths from the UK.
A similar vibe is transmitted on Freezywater, where the composer speaks the names of 49 disparate 'topographical features and places' along the M25 motorway—such as 'The Clump,' 'Old Slade,' and 'Devil's Den'—over Apartment Houses's cycling string sighs, entrancing reed organ tones, and piano accents, which occasionally and beautifully coalesce into elegant, sweeping ensemble passages. Chadburn and Kate Halsall create a fragile tunefulness over the latter's spare piano punctuations on Vapour Descriptors, bringing a poetic loveliness to a series of words commonly deployed by the fragrance industry. Throughout the entire collection the composer discovers a strange beauty by isolating the language and placing it in a strange location, interacting with simple melodic phrases to produce new, often alien meaning...
—Peter Margasak, Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical, April 2021
...The wild card of the British contemporary classical music scene, composer Leo Chadburn (aka Simon Bookish) widens the scope of his musical experimentation with this remarkable new release...The textures created are beautiful in their sparseness. The result is a floating dialogue that is hypnotizing and luring, stripped of drama, smooth, as if outside of this world. Slower / Talkerengages the listener in a subtle way. It is a sonically explorative journey, one worth taking...
—Ivana Popovic, The Whole Note, May 2021
Slower / Talker: LYRICS
1. THE INDISTINGUISHABLES
The Satellite / Strange Wave / Rhomboid Tortrix / The Many-lined / Clouded Border / Lunar Double-stripe / The Passenger / Gold Triangle / Small Black Arches / Sorcerer / The Traveller / Small Grass [Emerald] / Chalk Carpet / Small Rivulet / Clouded August Thorn / Pine Processionary / Frosted Green / Bordered Pearl / Scarlet Tiger / Map-winged Swift / The Forester / Merveille du Jour / Satin Lutestring / Peach Blossom / Beautiful Golden Y / Mother of Pearl / The Festoon / Yellow Horned / Feathered Beauty / The Gem / The Nonconformist / Pistol Case-bearer / The Shark / Dark Dagger / Blood-vein / Slender Burnished Brass / Heart & Club / The Drinker / Silver Hook / The Seraphim / The Exile / Old World Webworm / The Confused / Large Dark Prominent / Feathered Ear / The Lackey / Silver Cloud / Scarce Forester / The Triangle / Water Veneer / The Alchymist [sic] / Spotted Sulphur / The Geometrician / Tamarisk Plume / The Vestal / Figure of Eighty / Chinese Character / Fiery Clearwing / The Flame / The Phoenix / The Gothic / Apple Leaf Skeletonizer / Pale Stigma / Thistle Ermine / Silvery Arches / White-speck / Old Lady / Small Angle Shades / The Vapourer / Ghost Moth
2. VAPOUR DESCRIPTORS
aldehydic / animalic / balsamic / butyric / camphorous / resinous / ozonic / aromatic / terpenic / anisic / herbaceous / powdery / indolic / phenolic / musky / zesty / agrestic / vanillic / marine / floral / grassy / spicy / fruit / wood / green / green / wood / fruit / spicy / grassy / floral / marine / vanillic / agrestic / zesty / musky / phenolic / indolic / powdery / herbaceous /anisic / terpenic / aromatic / ozonic / resinous / camphorous / butyric / balsamic / animalic / aldehydic
3. FREEZYWATER
Freezywater / Unity Road / Cinder Ash / Tilekiln Osiers / Pond Wood / Dancers Hill / Smug Oak / Spielplatz / Long Spring / The Unicorn / The Clump / Mill End / Maple Cross / Copper Ridge / Grand Union / Happy Valley / Devil's Den / Old Slade / Saxon Lake / The Island / Spring Rise / Anchor Copse / Traveller / Stepgates / The Broom / The [River] Mole / The Mounts / Uplands / Herring Grove / Babylon Lane / Majority Plantation / The Shrubbery / The Conduit / River Eden / Wet Wood / Star Hill / Ashen Bank / Lane End / Dark Trees / Stone / High Trees / Dolphin Way / Hangman's Wood / Lodestar / Horseman Side / The Rough Patch / Bell Common / Sunshine Plain / Winters Way / Gunpowder Park / Tumbling Bay / Freezywater
4. X CHAIRMAN MAOS
Letting a hundred flowers blossom
and a hundred schools of thought contend
is the policy for promoting
the progress of the arts and sciences
and a flourishing socialist culture
in our land.
Different forms and styles in art
should develop freely
and different schools in science
should contend freely.
We think that it is harmful
to the growth of art and science
if administrative measures are used
to impose one particular style of art
or school of thought
and to ban another
5. FIVE LOOPS FOR THE BATHYSCAPHE
Epipelagic Zone (0-200m)
sunlight ... salt ... 23rd January 1960 ... the humid weather ...
the waves buffeting the craft ... flares burning on the surface ...
and photosynthesis ... now sinking slowly ...
Mesopelagic Zone (200-1000m)
twilight ... the bathyscaphe, like a balloon ... descending through the water column ...
gasoline, gradually compressing ... chlorine, 55% ... and strange animals ...
stratification ... the cooling water interrupts the descent ...
iron falling into the sea ... sinking slowly ...
Bathypelagic Zone (1000-4000m)
midnight ... total darkness ... then ... phosphorescence ...
Melanocetidae, Gonostomatidae ... plexiglass, shattering under pressure ...
the sudden shadow ... of the largest creatures ...
sodium, 30% ... sulphate, 8% ... ultramarine ... sinking slowly ...
Abyssopelagic Zone (4000-6000m)
the abyss ... bottomless ... searchlights trailing the limpid water ...
no sign of life ... magnesium, 3% ... calcium, 2% ...
the song of electronics inside the sphere ... pressure cylinders and soda lime ...
nearly freezing ... breathing slowly ...
Hadopelagic Zone (>6000m)
the trench ... potassium, 1% ... horizonless ... diatomaceous ooze ...
"this is Trieste ... Challenger Deep. Six three zero zero fathoms. Over." ...
electromagnets, failing on the seabed ... rising slowly ...
"I feel as if these hundreds of gallons of water are passing into my veins." ...
"Over"
6. THE HALOGENS
circles glowing in the dark ... turn off all the lights ... nervous system ... that which is concealed ... that which is revealed ... salt in the water ... salt on the tongue ... salt on the skin ... salt in the vessel ... imaginary salt ... this savage beast ... weaponised ... caught in the teeth of the machine ... ascending ... captured in the adjacent room ... damp bones ... it surges over you ... stronger than before ... then one single droplet ... occluded ... hazards in flux ... a stench in the breeze ... beacons on the shoreline ... buoys on the horizon ... alarm bells ... everything flowing ... everything melting ... dissolving in the drinking water ... acidic crusts ... receding from view ... temperatures rising ... temperatures falling ... temperatures stabilising ... temperatures indicated ... temperatures recorded ... vapours glowing ... vapours settling ... liquid pooling ... solids forming ... properties fleeting ... steel combusts ... titanium ignites ... colours bleed from the rocks ... the mountain in bloom ... the counter clicks ... pale yellow ... yellowish-green ... earthy, red .. purple-black ... unknown ... bubbling through ... a confluence ... brine churning... and seaweed ash ... full spectrum ... slipping away ... the lake evaporates ... in a blast of steam ... with fish swimming under it ... the cold trap .. electronegative ... corroding the image ... crystalline ... iridescent ... quickly decaying ... the reaction increases ... everything now purified ... washing over the photograph ... scintillation ... instability ... acrid cloud ... losing sight of you through the haze ... floating shapes ... the pattern spills out in all directions ... information inaccessible ... flavescent ... icterine ... rubiginous ... ianthine ... albescent ... distant cold planet ... metallic debris ... the spell is broken .. time reversed ... come with me ... fluorescing, of course ... eating through the surface ... your silhouette in the beam ... vibrations through the concrete ... decreasing into nothing ... reactive ... toxic ... odoriferous ... subliming off the floor ... transient ... that which is concealed ... that which is revealed ...nervous system ... circles glowing in the dark ... turn off all the lights