Chris Abrahams was born in Oamaru, New Zealand but grew up in Sydney, Australia. He became very active in the Sydney jazz scene in the early eighties playing with modern jazz groups including Mark Simmonds' Freeboppers and The Keys Music Orchestra. With Lloyd Swanton he formed the '60s modern jazz-influenced The Benders in 1982. During its day, the band released three albums -- E, False Laughter and Distance. In 1984 Chris recorded and released his first solo piano album -- Piano, followed in 1986 by Walk. In 1985 Chris became a founding member of the Sydney indie rock band The Sparklers. As a result of this, Chris began working regularly with the singer and songwriter Melanie Oxley. Chris collaborated with Melanie, writing songs and producing albums, throughout the nineties. There are five releases with her: Resisting Calm (1990), Welcome to Violet (1992), Coal (1994), Jerusalem Bay (1998), and Blood Oranges (2003). Chris released a third solo piano album, Glow, in 2001. This was followed in 2003 by Streaming, and then Thrown (2004), Play Scar (2010), Memory Night (2013), Fluid To The Influence (2017), and Appearance (2020).
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LP
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RM 4162LP
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For more than three decades now Sydney pianist and composer Chris Abrahams has developed a singularly iconic body of work. Known widely for his work with trio The Necks, Abrahams solo works have carved out an entirely otherworldly realm in sound. His explorations of organ, electronics, and piano capture a restless curiosity and timbral interrogation that only deepens with each of his releases. With Follower, his compositional language further expands. Melodies cascade with a cinematic pacing, spilling out over the top of harmonic electronics and unsteady percussive elements. He creates a sense of opening and space, a field within which we become lost and utterly consumed by the evolving states he casts into focus. On the opening track, "Costume", bass piano meanders through a wilderness of de-tuned bells and organ swells; a strange sort of festival. Low frequency sighs evenly punctuate, like a pump or a heartbeat. It's a procession that takes it time as it wanders the terrain, brought to a close with transcendent distortion. On the second piece, "New Kind of Border", muscular modal piano surfs among waves of percussion and analog synthesizers. A buffeting travel. Follower is Abrahams's sixth album for Room40 and it showcases his continuing interest in the ambiguous spaces between music and noise; tonality and atonality; rhythm and texture. All four tracks have piano as a key factor: in one instance, high-pitched and atonal; in another, emotive yet distant as if projected on to a screen. Follower presents the listener with a sound world of colorful juxtapositions, rich orchestration and organically open forms.
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CD
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RM 4132CD
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Australia's Chris Abrahams, widely known for his work with legendary trio The Necks, has amassed an impressive solo discography over the past three decades. With four electro-acoustic editions already published by Room40, the label announces Chris's first piano solo for the label. Appearance is two longform pieces for piano that weave and mesh to create a sense of flow and subtle shifting which unfolds into eternal variation.
A note from Lawrence English: "I first met Chris Abrahams sometime in the early part of the '00s. In 2003, I had the pleasure of spending a very late night glued to his sofa, lights diminished, being introduced to his solo work. That listening experience became known as Thrown, a record that to this day haunts me with its electronic timbral shifts and wheezing positive organ textures. Since that release, Chris's work has resided at the very heart of Room40. His music captured across his five solo editions is, I believe, both utterly personal and compellingly diverse. It is music that has been a source of respite, provocation and, most of all, inspiration for me (and many of you I am sure). Over the years, I have gently encouraged Chris to consider making a solo piano recording to compliment the series of electro-acoustic works he has made for us. Appearance is the manifestation of this encouragement. Appearance typifies a very particular approach to piano that Chris has cultivated across three decades. He creates a pairing of rippling cascades of tonality with a macro-minimalist compositional form that invites a sense of perpetual release. Notes cycle and gently coalesce to create weaving melodic patterns that accumulate into a slow unfolding of form, across time. Chris Abrahams' pieces, in many respects, defy an easy categorization. He creates music that is unto itself, but profoundly open to the situations in which is it encountered. It's this porous quality that makes his work so intoxicating. It is a music of moments, cycling in memory and accumulating across time in a way that is without compare. I can't recommend Appearance to you strongly enough."
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RM 409R-CD
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Room40 release at 15th anniversary edition of Chris Abrahams's Thrown, originally released in 2005. A note from Lawrence English: "I've written quite often about my first experience listening to Thrown at Chris's place in Sydney. On that initial listening I was equal parts terrified and awestruck. The sensation of sitting there, in low light after midnight, listening with Chris and our mutual friend Clayton after an evening out at a NowNow event, is something I can recall vividly. Thrown is a record that, from the very outset, has roused me in a very direct, particular and profound, sense of affect. Recorded using Dx-7, piano and a positive organ, the album exists in some kind of parallel acoustic dimension where these divergent musical timbres are somehow brought together into a unifying (albeit unsettling) whole. It was the first recording Chris had made like it, and in my opinion, it set a benchmark which has guided his numerous releases for Room40. Now 15 years on from its original release, it seemed like a suitable moment to seed this edition back into the sonic consciousness. Time has cast little shadow on this edition - it still sounds absolutely outside of time. It creates its own microcosm upon each listening and remains one of the records from the Room40 catalogue that deeply resonates for me."
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CD
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RM 464CD
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Chris Abrahams returns with Fluid To The Influence. Building upon the foundation of his previous three editions for Room40, Abrahams charts out a divergent course through lilting piano flows, distended organ passages, thunderous electronic eruptions, and focused concrète explorations. Fluid To The Influence spans a huge spectrum of sound, each movement calling forward to the next in a flowing motion that demonstrates Abrahams's commitment to and interest in the album as an artistic form. Known widely for his piano work with post-everything trio The Necks, Abrahams's output as a composer orbits an otherworldly sonic sphere. Piano is just one element he draws upon to create a deliberately expansive sound field within which the listener is invited to become lost. He is one of the most significant voices in Australian music, and arguably one of the most restless and original artists creating work today. From Lawrence English: "In 2015, whilst celebrating our 15th anniversary, I revisited all of Chris's records. I still have such strong memories of listening to Thrown in his living room in 2004. It was late, after a concert for NowNow Festival, and the living room in which we were seating was dim. Some light crept in from the kitchen, scarcely that of a flickering candle. The music started and forever my world was changed. On Fluid To The Influence Chris continues his tradition of creating deeply personal and evocative sonic worlds. He has a compositional sensitivity and gravity few other artists share. This album draws together the divergent trends in his music creating a powerful and at times hallucinatory audio-vision."
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LP
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RM 464LP
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LP version. Chris Abrahams returns with Fluid To The Influence. Building upon the foundation of his previous three editions for Room40, Abrahams charts out a divergent course through lilting piano flows, distended organ passages, thunderous electronic eruptions, and focused concrète explorations. Fluid To The Influence spans a huge spectrum of sound, each movement calling forward to the next in a flowing motion that demonstrates Abrahams's commitment to and interest in the album as an artistic form. Known widely for his piano work with post-everything trio The Necks, Abrahams's output as a composer orbits an otherworldly sonic sphere. Piano is just one element he draws upon to create a deliberately expansive sound field within which the listener is invited to become lost. He is one of the most significant voices in Australian music, and arguably one of the most restless and original artists creating work today. From Lawrence English: "In 2015, whilst celebrating our 15th anniversary, I revisited all of Chris's records. I still have such strong memories of listening to Thrown in his living room in 2004. It was late, after a concert for NowNow Festival, and the living room in which we were seating was dim. Some light crept in from the kitchen, scarcely that of a flickering candle. The music started and forever my world was changed. On Fluid To The Influence Chris continues his tradition of creating deeply personal and evocative sonic worlds. He has a compositional sensitivity and gravity few other artists share. This album draws together the divergent trends in his music creating a powerful and at times hallucinatory audio-vision."
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CD
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RM 453CD
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Chris Abrahams' Memory Night is his third edition for Room40 -- Play Scar and Thrown preceding this album. Widely-recognized as the pianist for Australian liminal improvisation trio The Necks, Chris Abrahams' solo work etches out an entirely different universe. It's a place that is entirely his own, unashamedly unique and at times startling -- yet always alluring. On Memory Night, Abrahams' expands his sonic palette, building on the uneasy frontiers of the highly-regarded Play Scar. Never content to revisit past glories, Abrahams charts course into unfamiliar sound spaces, where electronics and instruments meet in a constant state of tension and release. Nothing is quite what it appears upon first listen and as a result Memory Night demands an attentive ear. Recorded across 2011 and 2012, Memory Night is a haunted series of pieces that provoke and compel. Chris Abrahams has created what can only be described as a profound rendering of contemporary composition -- a powerful, yet delicate evocation of sound, where instruments and electronics melt and are reformed.
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