John Metcalfe - Absence - VINYL LP

John Metcalfe, who arranges songs for big names such as Coldplay, Simple Minds and The Pretenders, has produced albums with Peter Gabriel and has been touring for decades as a member of the Duke Quartet. Now he releases his debut album on the Neue Meister tag. Metcalfe has always been surrounded by music. As a child, he would listen to his father sing opera, before a love of Kraftwerk and Joy Division led to a stint as a drummer in a high school band. But it was a move to Manchester that really accelerated his development as an artist, and led to him finding his true calling. Joining cult band The Durutti Column, then signed to legendary tag Factory Records, brought him into the orbit of Tony Wilson and the Hacienda, formative events that would help foster his renegade spirit. Unimpressed with the strictures demanded by the classical recording industry, Metcalfe persuaded Wilson to launch the ground-breaking Factory Classical tag, aimed at unearthing exciting - and unconventional - new British talent. It was here that Metcalfe found a home, and the group that would come to define his musical career; the Duke Quartet. For nearly 30 years, they've existed at the vanguard of contemporary British music, innovating and delighting in equal measure. Working with world-renowned artists across the entire cultural spectrum, from pop, dance, film, TV, and theatre, Metcalfe honed his arranging and producing skills; he's now one of the UK's most sought after arrangers, regularly working with some of biggest names in music. As a solo artist, Metcalfe explores electro-classical soundscapes and the boundaries between genres. His finely tuned compositions are neat yet grand in scale, both in terms of sound and the conceptual ideas underpinning them. Absence, the fifth record to bear his own name, is something of a departure for Metcalfe, framing bold images and themes with some of the

John Metcalfe - the Durutti Column viola-playing master who for years has been a composer and arranger for the likes of U2, Coldplay, Peter Gabriel and Blur, as well as co-founder with Tony Wilson of the Factory Classical tag - had been composing music spontaneously, instinctively, when the idea of Tree arrived. An album that immerses the listener in twenty-four hours of the life of nature's most majestic creations, it came from a desire in John to write at scale - perhaps a natural reaction for a composer writing out of the silences and solitude of our recent pandemic years. The pieces I was writing were big and trying to be bigger, so I knew they had to be to do with something - and then I thought about one of the most profound experiences of my life.Inch We begin at the start of a cycle, tracking the progress of light through a day into a night. We are in a very special place. Quivering violins rise and build, and we hear the energy of tissue carrying water from roots to stems to leaves. Then we catch magical explosions of birdsong, sense fluttering movement under starlight, and feel the burrowing resonances of roots, as lower strings, oboe and bassoon take instruments made from natural materials back into the earth - and take us with them. Album Tracks 1. Xylem 2. Canopy 3. Root to Leaf 4. Stasis 5. Tãne Mahuta 6. Dusk 7. Night 8. Sunrise

'The Absence' is the third record from grammy-nominated Melody Gardot. Produced by Heitor Pereira, renowned for his work as a film composer ('Despicable Me', 'It's Complicated', 'From Prada to Nada') and world-class session guitarist (Sting, Seal, Caetano Veloso), the Brazilian-born, US-based artist shared Melody's enthusiasm for driving off the beaten path of western pop, jazz, blues and soul. And he was as adventurous as melody when it came to inventive sonic ideas. From the deserts of Morocco to the streets of Lisboa, from the tango bars of Buenos Aires to the beaches of Brazil, 'The Absence' captures the essence of each of these exotic locales, while at the same time remaining quintessentially Melody Gardot. Album Tracks 1. Mira 2. Amalia 3. So Long 4. So We Meet Again My Heartache 5. Lisboa 6. Impossible Love 7. If I Tell You I Love You 8. Goodbye 9. Se Voce Me Ama 10. My Heart Won't Have It Any Other Way 11. Iemanja