Ongoing collaboration with Tim Bowness

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Peter Chilvers

Tim Bowness and I are putting the finishing touches to a new album, a follow up to California, Norfolk (a mere 14 years after its release!) We’ve continued to write songs on and off together over the intervening years. Some have made their way to other projects (Slow Electric and A Marble Calm), while a few others have been hanging around waiting for the right arrangement. About half of the material has been written in the last couple of years, and I think is our best work to date.

I’ll post more details on it later. In the meantime, California Norfolk was remastered by Mike Bearpark and reissued in 2014 with a a second disk packed with bonus content. We’re expect to have it available as a digital download very soon. Here’s the full blurb:

Originally released in 2002, California, Norfolk was the debut album from Tim Bowness (No-Man/Henry Fool) and Peter Chilvers (Brian Eno/Karl Hyde).

Burning Shed’s first ever official cd release, available online only, the album quickly sold out and has been available for inflated prices on eBay for the best part of a decade.

Combining electronic textures and found sounds with panoramic arrangements and poignant lyrics, the album’s synthesis of singer-songwriter intimacy and imaginative production values distinctively echoes aspects of The Blue Nile, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Nick Drake, Peter Gabriel, and Brian Eno’s work.

From the orchestral sweep of Hostage to the cinematic ambition of the 10 minute Winter With You via the slow-building intensity of Days Turn Into Years, the album forms a coherent suite of musical short stories that rates amongst the duo’s strongest work.

Ballad Electronica, 21st Century Ambient Folk, or perhaps the soundtrack to the best film you’ve never seen, this 2013 double cd reissue features the original album (re-mastered by Michael Bearpark) plus Overstrand (a collection of alternate versions), unreleased material earmarked for a follow-up album, and an EP’s worth of live performances.

Presented in a deluxe dvd-sized digi-book, which includes sleeve notes by Tim Bowness and Peter Chilvers in addition to previously unseen artwork by Carl Glover.

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Quarta – A unique digital board game with Brett J. Gilbert

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Peter Chilvers

Quarta, my app with Brett J. Gilbert was released in July, just as Brett was nominated for a coveted Kennerspiel des Jahres award for Elysium.

Quarta

While my apps with Brian Eno have been purely musical experiences, Quarta is a board game designed specifically to be played on iOS devices. I love the way it’s possible to completely lose yourself in apps like Carcassonne or Threes, and wanted to fuse that with the kind of musical engagement people found with Bloom. So Quarta creates a tranquil soundtrack based on the moves you make, and it grows more complex as you play.

Brett has been responsible for the icons and menu layouts in all of my apps to date. We have been friends for over twenty five years, and in the last decade he introduced me to the board game Carcassonne. I think I’ve lost against him on a more or less weekly basis for much of that time. He had the idea for Quarta when the iPad came out in 2010, and I’m very pleased that we’ve finally managed to realise it.

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Fovea Hex remix

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Peter Chilvers

I’ve recorded a remix of Glacial Lake, by Fovea Hex, adding piano, synths and samples to Clodagh Simmonds original voice and harmonium performance, as well as slightly restructuring the track.

Fovea Hex are one of my favourite bands ; their mixture of dark skeletal songs with sparsely played instruments and electronic textures is something of a perfect blend. I strongly recommend you check out this and their other work.

Fovea Hex Bandcamp page

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Karl Hyde Tour 2013

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Peter Chilvers

In 2013 I toured with Underworld vocalist Karl Hyde as keyboardist and musical director. The tour was a life-changing whirlwind which started in a club in Brighton and took in performances at venues across Europe, Japan and even the Sydney Opera House before ending at Fuji Rock in front of 60,000 people. I never found time to post about it!

The performance I enjoyed most was at the Union Chapel in Islington. I think this video captures the joy of the occasion, the bounciness of bassist Gaz Williams and the exuberance of fellow keyboardist Angie Pollock’s piano solo.

Karl talks about the album and tour here. I may have blubbed a bit watching this.

Gaz Williams went into much more detail on the tour Gaz Williams Tour Diary.

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Cromer Waves

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Peter Chilvers

I’ve written instrumentals for two videos I recorded last year when a heavy storm battered the Norfolk coast. Both were filmed in Cromer, a beautiful town on the North Norfolk Coast as heavy storms were hitting much of Britain. I’ve been going there for years to watch the waves, but this was the wildest the sea had been in sixty years.

The video footage is often shaky and erratic ; it was shot on an iPhone 5 in a howling gale, and for some of it I was leaning out of a window to take the shot.

The first piece is a piano improvisation I recorded against the film while testing out ideas. My original plan had be been to slow the waves to half their speed, and create a sound track using strings and electronics, but nothing I tried seemed to work as well. Showing the waves against a melancholy musical backdrop seems to give the illusion that they are at a slower speed, I like the balletic grace it lends them.

For second video, I went for something more turbulent and tortured. The sounds are very bright ; it might be rather harsh on cheap speakers.

I’ll write a more detailed update on the various things I’ve been up to shortly.

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Henry Fool – Men Singing

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Peter Chilvers

A rather belated update, the first of several.

A few months ago, the second Henry Fool album “Men Singing” was released on Kscope, more than a decade after the band’s debut.

Henry Fool is an odd band for me… The band is a very deliberate re-imagining of some of the prog rock / prog jazz albums I loved in my youth, and as such is far more nostalgic and less original than most of the projects I like to get involved in. It’s not really music I listen to anymore (I still haven’t heard the final album!)

But… I have enormous fun playing on it. In this case, I turned up to a studio somewhere in Norfolk, played bass all day (one of the few times I’ve played bass in the last ten years sadly), and some time later, thanks to the machinations of Stephen Bennett, Jarrod Gosling (who I’ve yet to meet) and Tim Bowness, an album appears!

Phil Manzanera plays some very interesting guitar on the album, which means I’ve now worked with two Roxy Music members entirely independently.

A limited edition mini-gatefold package has now sold out (I really should update this page more quickly) but the jewel case version of the album is still available:

There’s a brief promotional trailer for the album here (very funny picture of me in rock monster form at 1:15)

You can also listen to a few tracks here:

Updates on the tour with Underworld’s Karl Hyde and a reissue of California, Norfolk, my album with Tim Bowness to follow shortly… honest…

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Karl Hyde live band

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Peter Chilvers

Some very exciting news I can announce at last: I’m part of a live band formed by Karl Hyde of Underworld which will be touring this year to promote his first solo album, Edgeland.

I met first met Karl in 2009 when he and Brian Eno were preparing for their Pure Scenius project (which included Edgeland’s co-producer Leo Abrahams.) Like Brian, Karl has a genuine passion and excitement for making music that’s a joy to be around. When I heard he was putting a band together, I did something I rarely do, and with a modest cough hinted that I might possibly know a keyboardist who would be interested. I’m delighted that he indulged me. The band – I’ll let the other musicians identify themselves – has been rehearsing this last week, and I can’t wait for us to take it out on the road.

Sonar Tokyo is the only date that has been announced so far and I haven’t any other information. Meanwhile, here’s the track Cut Clouds, one of my favourite tracks from the album:

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Meet the Developers Video Podcast

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Peter Chilvers

On October 5th, Brian Eno and I were invited by the Apple to give a talk about our new app Scape at their store on Regent Street, London. This has now been released as a podcast. It’s 45 minutes long, including a Q&A session at the end, available as both video and audio. I’d recommend the video version, as there are sections where we’re displaying Scape as we discuss it.

It was an extremely enjoyable to talk onstage with Brian, and as an unashamed Apple fanboy, a thrill to do so at the stylish Apple Store on Regent Street. Slightly peculiar seeing myself onscreen for the first time. It looks like I’m getting well on my way in my long planned transition into a mad professor.

We also filmed an interview to Matt Cowan from Reuters earlier this week, which has been cropping up on news channels around the world. I believe a longer edit may surface at some point. Matt’s also posted some pictures from the interview.

On an unrelated note, I’ve reviewed the atmospheric iPad puzzler “The Room” on my Unworldly blog.

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Talk with Brian Eno in London at Apple Retail Store

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Peter Chilvers

Brian and I will be discussing our new iPad app Scape and more with Matt Jones this Friday, October 5th at 5:30 pm at the Apple Retail Store, Regent Street, London. There’s no reserved seating, so if you’d like to come, please get there early.

In the past week, we’ve given several interviews concerning Scape:

Guardian Interview, with Stuart Dredge
Wired UK, with Ian Steadman
Brian in conversation with Rory-Cellan Jones (BBC)

More to come!

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Scape for the iPad by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Peter Chilvers

Scape is a new iPad app I’ve been developing with Brian Eno for nearly two years. Although it is a further venture into generative music, it’s very different to our earlier apps, Bloom and Trope.

View Scape on the App Store

Here’s a video of Scape in action, narrated by a mystery voice:

We actually released Scape last week, but unfortunately there was a nasty issue causing a crash at startup for some users. After spotting a pattern – all of the emails were from non-English speaking European countries – we were able to narrow it down to a regional setting. An update is now available from the App Store which fixes the problem. Sorry if you were affected by this bug!

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