Does your street have its own sound? Beyond the cars and the voices and the perpetual white noise of modern life, do the local spaces that you call home – the parks and the paths, the great trees and the graveyards – have their own distinct musical personalities? Do they offer up melodies that come alive when one foot goes down in front of the other, or when the sun blinks out over the horizon?
Andrew Wasylyk – the visionary Scottish composer and producer – has quietly set about soundtracking his locale to dazzling effect. His recent triptych of albums (Themes for Build-ings and Spaces, The Paralian and Fugitive Light and Themes of Consolation) collectively ex-plored the East coast of Scotland, while 2021’s masterful Balgay Hill: Morning in Magnolia took inspiration from a Dundee park that provided a peaceful respite for many against the creeping panic of the pandemic.
On each of those records, Wasylyk has created a focused piece of musical landscape art. At points, the music recalls visionary players such as Alice Coltrane, Joanna Brouk and David Axelrod or the intimacy and warmth of outsider musical artists such as The Pastels or Virgin-ia Astley. While the records are ambient, they aren’t passive experiences. These are sounds that evoke interaction with physical space, that encourage the listener to move within Wasylyk’s musical contour lines.
Andrew Wasylyk’s curiosity about textural music burgeoned after growing up playing in a multitude of guitar-led bands. “I’ve always been interested in music that has space in it, whether that’s ambient, classical, even jazz. Possibly I was drawn to those genres because I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on in them, investigating them in my own way allowed me to explore a lot of interesting grey areas. Listening to them, they intrigued me because I didn’t have a defined picture of how they had come together, unlike as if I was sitting at a piano and writing a song with melodies and lyrics, or picking up a guitar and playing in a room with a loud four-piece.”
Join Andrew and his eight-piece ensemble for an epic sonic journey.
A standing show. On sale 10am 2nd September.
Presented by Music-Net; a partnership between producer and promoter Root Music and Inner City Music, owners and operators of iconic Manchester venue Band on the Wall, funded by Arts Council England.
