“Has an ability to mystify, dazzle and soothe with every twist”
Pitchfork
We are out-of-this-world excited to welcome back Robert Stillman for his album launch show – this time joined by multi-instrumentalist Seán Carpio!
We first heard Robert play his saxophone with his improv group Bogbodies when Marcus Hamblett put him on here. ‘That’s the best improvised music we have ever heard here!’ we said at the time! Then learnt of his solo albums and developed a long obsession with Rainbow (2022). Click and listen to the beaut right now whilst you read more about him if you wish!
We were really delighted when we heard he was playing with Thom York, Jonny Greenwoord and Tom Skinner as part of the Smile tour where he also played support! Wow! Well deserved recognition because his music really is SPECIAL! His past collaborations are amazing – projects led by Skinner, Dave Okumu, and co-led with Sean Carpio, Kit Downes and Anders Holst, among others like Grizzly Bear.
Is it Jazz? I mean kinda – he’s clearly a shit hot Jazz saxophonist and muuulti-instrumentalist (he plays every instrument on Rainbow) – it’s also very much soundscape and sound art and music concrete but feels like long form spiritual music too… You just gotta trust us and come hear for yourselves!
This time he is launching his new album 10,000 rivers.- a speculative suite of jazz, ambient and smooth pop-inspired compositions that challenge the myths of Silicon Valley’s early ‘90s techno-utopianism. He didn’t set out to make a concept album about Steve Jobs. But as a composer and improviser whose music asks questions about his relationship with reality, a curiosity about the promises and follies of technology took him there.
“10,000 Rivers points to an alternative narrative about a man who is tormented by the instability of his reality, so tries to invent his way out of it,” Stillman explains. “Ultimately, his tech designs become expressions of his will to replace the messy, disordered, temporary nature of the world with something that strives to be barely physical: streamlined, symmetrical, uncomplicated, and deathless.”
Highly original, wholly unclassifiable, 10,000 Rivers is part cultural critique, part sonic biography and takes the form of a series of songs, instrumentals and abstract soundscapes that respond directly to moments or paradigms from Jobs’ life. Twinkling, synthetic arpeggios sit alongside tumbledown acoustic improvisation – think Mort Garson meets Moondog – fragments of ambient sound collapse into queasy auto-tuned lullabies, the melancholy paradise of Brian Wilson-esque California Dreaming dismantled into uncanny free jazz freakouts.
In addition to 12 records under his own name, he has also created work for installation and various media, has curated the ‘Oscillate’ collection of artist lecture performances/essays in collaboration with the Turner Museum, Margate, and contributed to film score recordings by Adem Ilhan, Daniel Pemberton, Jonny Greenwood, and Thom Yorke.
JOHANNA BRAMLI
Johanna Bramli is a local badass, originally from Switzerland with North African roots and a long time collaborator of The Rose Hill. She is a brilliant vocalist and musician, sound artist, composer and performer who works with textures, noise, sonic spaces, and audience interaction.
Her music is hard to pin down but if you love Colleen, Grouper, William Basinski and Eno then we reckon you will also be well into this!
She is also Course Leader for the Digital Music & Sound Arts BA course (DMSA) at the University of Brighton. She is one half of electronic/motorik/pop band Fröst , and founder of all-female noise/feedback improv choir The Larsens. She is also the co-founder of MAMI – supporting Mamas across the Music Industry.