Julia Kent's Temporal released next week, new single 'Crepuscolo' available now

Julia Kent - Temporal (released 25th January 2019)

Julia Kent's new album Temporal (The Guardian's Contemporary Album of the Month - see more reactions below) is released next week. The track 'Crepuscolo' is available on all services today. Apple Music | Bandcamp | SoundCloud| Spotify Julia has a show in her hometown New York on Thursday 7th March at National Sawdust with Christopher Tignoropening the night. Full details of this and Julia's other confirmed shows can be found at the bottom of this email. Thanks Ben

Watch the pastoral video for previous single ‘Imbalance’, directed by artist Gregory Euclide, whose beautiful work you may know from the cover of Bon Iver’s second album. We'd recommend watching the Vimeo upload for the optimum experience. The video is on YouTube too. The video is an extension of his impressionistic landscape works. “The first time I heard the song I got chills,” Euclide explains. “Something about the methodical ticking that was out of rhythm, stutter stepping through the drone… the pulse. It pulled my imagination in multiple directions. It was at once romantic and dramatic with the sense of doom. I was the prairie responding to the wind and the wave eating away the shoreline. I was a butterfly and the ocean... hopeful, lonely and aware of my limited time within the system.”

On Temporal: “Epic” 4/5 Contemporary Album of the Month, The Guardian “This is music on a truly human scale, in terms of its inspiration, delivery and undeniable emotional punch” 4/5 MOJO “Music for abandoned airports” 8/10 Uncut “Her playing is as graceful as any ballerina, but this is a not-so-merry dance through sombre post-classical soundscapes at once both intimate and imposing” 8/10 DJ “Here’s a record of real substance from this extraordinary Canadian cellist and composer. Richly textured and full of depth and complexity that will enamour devotees of neo-classicists such as Max Richter or Jóhann Jóhannsson” Electronic Sound “Temporal is deep and distinctive, another high mark in a distinguished career” A Closer Listen “Julia Kent’s Temporal acts as a meditation on both time and the transitory, fragile nature of existence. Temporal has an intimate relationship with that of the physical world” Fluid Radio “Gorgeous record” Tom Ravenscroft, BBC 6 Music

artist: Julia Kent title: Temporal label: The Leaf Label formats: CD (BAY 106CD) Limited edition white vinyl LP+CD (BAY 106VX) Black vinyl LP+CD (BAY 106V) digital (BAY 106E) release date: Friday 25 January 2019

Temporal is the elegantly restrained new album by Canadian cellist/composer Julia Kent. Following the dissonance and tension of her previous album for Leaf, 2015’s Asperities, Temporalis a meditation on the transitory and fragile nature of existence. Plaintive cello lines floating over metronomic rhythms echo the passage of time, and the emotions that can evoke. Much of the music that comprises Temporal was originally written to accompany theatre and dance productions. “The initial inspiration was more external than internal, in that many of these pieces began as a response to a text or a choreographic concept,” Julia explains, “but they all seemed to be coming from the same emotional world and it made sense to weave them together into a record.” “When I perform live with dance and theatre, it makes me enormously aware of the fragility of our physical world. Dancers and actors, anyone whose instrument is their body, have nothing to protect them from the rules of gravity and time. They are so strong, but they’re subject to those demands in a more extreme way because of the physicality of what they’re doing. Onstage, I have an instrument to mediate for me, but they are bare. When I work with dancers, especially, I feel as though there can be an incredible energy exchange. They create a sort of weather system on the stage.” After the threat of violent release on Asperities, Temporal’s relationship to the physical world manifests itself in a more organic, human sound. The electronic manipulations are subtler, with Julia sampling voices from a theatre production and processing them into unrecognisable textures: ghosts of the source material. “I included the processed voices to acknowledge the genesis of the music and also because I wanted to incorporate vocals in a way that turned voice into texture, and blurred the lines between sonic elements.” Julia Kent has built a dedicated fan base over the course of five solo studio albums and extensive European and North American touring, after first coming to prominence with Rasputina and Antony and the Johnsons. In demand as a musical collaborator and composer for film, theatre and dance, she has recently worked with Nadja, Markus Guentner, Western Skies Motel, Library Tapes, and Sophie Hutchings (for Gregory Euclide’s Thesis project). In the dance world she has collaborated with Ballett Mannheim in Germany, and Italian company Balletto Civile. CD: LP: 1. A1. Last Hour Story 2. A2. Imbalance (video) 3. A3. Conditional Futures 4. B1. Floating City 5. B2. Sheared 6. B2. Through the Window 7. B3. Crepuscolo

Listen/Buy: Leaf shop | Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud Social: juliakent.com | Facebook | Twitter | theleaflabel.com/juliakent

The shows in full: Tuesday 12th February EartH, LONDON (with Poppy Ackroyd) 11-17 Stoke Newington Road, N16 8BH Doors 7.30pm Tickets £18 Tuesday 5th March Les Bains Douches, Montbeliard, FRANCE Thursday 7th March National Sawdust, Brooklyn, NY, USA (with Christopher Tignor) Thursday 11th April Palac Akropolis, PRAGUE, Czech Republic (with Poppy Ackroyd)

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