Julia Kent releases track from forthcoming album
Cellist Julia Kent releases her new album Character on March 4, and she's just made the first track from the album available through her Bandcamp. 'Tourbillon' is available to stream and download for free now.
Character (full press release below) is Julia's third album and first for Leaf. Let me know if you'd like a copy!
Keep up to date with Julia's touring plans here.
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Opportunities for introspection have come few and far between for Canadian-born, New York City-based cellist Julia Kent. After coming to prominence as a member of the cello-driven group Rasputina in the ‘90s, she went on to arrange and play on numerous recordings and tour extensively as a member of Antony and the Johnsons, among other projects.
The opportunity to explore her own emotional and creative world came with her solo LPs, Delay (2007) and Green and Grey (2011), and it is something she appropriates fully on her captivating debut for The Leaf Label, Character.
Recorded alone in her home studio, Character
develops the layering techniques Kent brought to the fore on her
previous solo material, the flow of intertwining cello motifs working
as an external representation of competing internal meditations. “I
ended up thinking about the process of life,” explains Kent. “How
sometimes a narrative in fiction is meant to mirror the chronology of
human life, and how our lives, in a way, can resemble works of fiction,
but without the possibility of controlling the outcome the way an
author can.” Thus, she called the album Character, a reference to the notion of humans being characters in their own narrative.
In the past the cellist has adopted field recordings to accompany her playing; Delay
saw recordings taken from various airports as Kent became fascinated by
their ambience, whilst samples were taken from nature as she explored
boundaries between electronic and organic sounds on Green and Grey. In Character, their somewhat hidden nature is just as important, reflecting the need for introspection that drives the album.
“Incorporated
sounds are important,” Kent explains. “They contrast and complement the
cello, my primary instrument, and also evoke the concept of a voice
without being, literally, a voice. So I used a lot of found and
processed sounds to try to achieve that: from matches being struck, to
wineglasses, to the sound of pen on paper, to an ancient autoharp that,
over time, ended up being detuned in a way that created an amazing
sonority.”
Underpinning
it all is the Canadian’s love and attention to detail for recording and
looping; she’s an artist who derives pleasure from the familiarity of
recurring patterns, yet also sees each revolution as a chance to adjust
and alter, and so subtly moving a soundscape onto a different plane
altogether. A loop, too, means that no mistake is truly an error, more
a facet that can be expanded upon when the next cycle comes round. “I
love that events within a loop can become integral through repetition,”
she enthuses, “So you learn to embrace the accident, or the
serendipitous sound that takes the music in an unexpected direction.”
If her first two albums saw Kent developing her individuality, Character
is perhaps the first time she’s had the courage to take what she’s
learnt and deliver an album of such depth and contemplative beauty.
“It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to enter other people’s
musical worlds and discover how they communicate their ideas,” she
insists, “But I love the autonomy of creating and performing entirely
alone.” It’s all too easy to forget that, in a world of unprecedented
access to information, advice, opinion and influence, the most
important voice to anyone is their own. It’s something Julia Kent
knows, though, and has sought to hear over the din of her surroundings,
in doing so producing her most confident solo statement yet.
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