The label Erased Tapes lies perfectly at the crossroads of craft today, from instrument building and modification (electronic and acoustic) to performance and composition (again, electronic and acoustic). And a new collaboration weaves together all those threads. We couldn’t be more pleased to get to share the first exclusive track from that project, as well as announce an event we’ll co-present here in Berlin in June.
Peter Broderick and Greg Haines are each multi-instrumentalist composers, at home singing and playing instruments both new and old. Their relationship spans several years, but this year brings the debut of a finished record from that collaboration. Greg Gives Peter Space is a unique hybrid of cosy folk and spacey dub, producing a sound a bit unlike either one. And in a live context, the matrix of synths and effects they use in improvisatory constellations should produce a more far-out space journey than the living room-close sound you get here. Either way, it’s gorgeous stuff, the product of the care these two artists bring to the work of sound design and songwriting and performance.
On the evening of June 9, the duo will join us in an event we present with Berghain Kantine and Erased Tapes. (Details below, if you’re in or near Berlin.) The record is out on digital and vinyl June 16.
In the meantime, we can enjoy this cut:
Let’s not stop there, though. Here’s Peter Broderick playing with another collaborator, Martyn Heyne, in 2012 for his album that year, These Walls Of Mine, revealing that same improvisatory acumen. (This one take, no edits, complete with instruments and synths and such – and the floorboards becoming part of the instrument.)
Peter Broderick – I’ve Tried (Live Studio Version) from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.
Then there’s Greg Haines, whose edits and re-edits and re-recordings and reworkings of instruments and synths alike produces a thick stew of echoing, fuzzy sound – a slow-cooked electronic stew, having smoked for countless hours. His own opus from last year, “Where We Were,” is a rich epic, on Denovali – and defies logical SoundCloud tags as well as genres.
At the same time, he’s just at home massing sound and texture with contemporary ensembles. This is, to me, post-minimalist classical writing at its essence: harmonies and rhythms often hew to the simple, but color and timbre rise to the fore, in just the sort of language the course of 20th Century writing seemed to predict.
The live event I think will be special; Kantine (where we hosted our own event during CTM Festival 2013) is small enough to get close to the artists, yet still has the kind of atmosphere where people can dance around. If you’d like to join us in Berlin:
Event titll: Peter Broderick and Greg Haines
Venue: Berghain Kantine, Berlin
Date: June 9, 2014
Doors: 8pm
Begin: 9pm
Tickets – Koma36Description: Greg Gives Peter Space – after years of playing fairly quiet music for an often seated audience Peter and Greg can’t wait to get on stage and bounce around to some groovy rhythms, heavy bass and spacey synthesizers. Prepare for take off!
And here’s what the artists and label have to say about this release and how it came to be, wherever you happen to catch it in the world:
Greg Gives Peter Space – the long overdue first collaborative work by Greg Haines and Peter Broderick
“Greg and I became good friends while both living in Berlin, around 2009 to 2013. We spent countless late nights playing records for each other, dreaming the dream of good music. We talked a lot about collaborating and even put in quite a few hours at each other’s studios . . . but for some strange reason we never seemed to finish anything. Maybe we were just busy enough with our other projects and didn’t feel in any rush. But we certainly had it in mind that we’d like to finish something one day. And we are very proud to say that day is finally here!
Primarily inspired by mine and Greg’s recent obsession with dub music, Greg Gives Peter Space is a mini album comprised of six tracks filled with – you guessed it – spacey sounds, created with the help of Greg’s ever-growing collection of synthesizers, tape delays and reel-to-reel machines. In the true spirit of dub music, many of the mixes were made live, both of us hovering over the mixing board, dancing around and following our intuitions, processing the sounds with live effects while the music bounced down to tape., We are extremely excited to release this record in the summer time and to celebrate with a few select shows around Europe. We’ve enlisted our dear friend Martyn Heyne to help us perform the music live, and we plan on bringing as much of the original gear from the recordings as possible. After years of playing fairly quiet music for an often seated audience, we can’t wait to get on stage and bounce around to some groovy rhythms, heavy bass and spacey synthesizers. Prepare for take-off! “ – Peter Broderick, April 2014
Peter Broderick (1987) is an American born multi-instrumentalist and singer. In his later teenage years he became entwined in the Portland (Oregon) indie folk scene, recording for the likes of M. Ward, Laura Gibson and Dolorean. 2007 saw him moving across the ocean to Denmark, where he began a long collaboration with the band Efterklang, touring the world with them for the next five years. Meanwhile he recorded several albums of solo material, ranging from sparse classical compositions (Float) to homemade folk music (Home), constantly experimenting with different musical genres, and also being commissioned to write music for several films and contemporary dance works. He then lived in Berlin for several years where he met and collaborated with Nils Frahm, Dustin O’Halloran and several others. He now lives back in America, near where he grew up, and continues to travel the world performing solo concerts and collaborating with a vast array of different musicians and artists.
Over the course of seven years, British born and Berlin based composer Greg Haines has carved out an intensely beautiful corner in the vast and ever-growing musical world. He has surprised music lovers around the globe with his unique and overtly personal approach to creating and performing a very patient and contemplative music, and with his numerous projects with other musicians and choreographers, including his collaborations with choreographer David Dawson for the Dutch National Ballet and the Royal Opera House, and his on-going work with The Alvaret Ensemble and The Group.
Greg Gives Peter Space will be released on Vinyl and Download via Erased Tapes on June 16, 2014.
Finally, I want to close with this video that Peter Broderick shares. It’s a brief documentary about luthier G.D. Armstrong. Hailing from nearby Oregon countryside to where Peter himself grew up, the instrument maker constructed the violin that follows Peter on tour. This is the sort of love of the making of instruments that I imagine unites caring artists in the 21st Century, whether it’s the construction of a monome controller, a Max patch, the slicing of a sample, the making of a score, or an acoustic instrument with centuries of history.
And it’s an honor to get to celebrate those things with these artists and labels, together in a room and here online.
The Instrument Maker from Steven Dempsey on Vimeo.
For more:
greghaines.co.uk
peterbroderick.net
erasedtapes.com
