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LP
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BB 368LP
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LP version. Irish producer Chris W Ryan (Just Mustard, NewDad, Robocobra Quartet) began releasing music under the moniker Sorbet in 2020 with the express intention to cleanse the palate; both for the listener and himself. Spending much of his time in the studio with other artists, Chris took inspiration from producer-led albums like Brian Eno's Another Green World: "I love the way you can hear the playful interaction between friends on an album like that --there are none of the constraints or rules that you might have when you're trying to represent the sound of a live band or artist." Exploring freely across genre bounds, the world of Sorbet is informed by electronic music just as much as classical and alt-pop, with nods to artists like Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, Kate Bush, and David Byrne. Inspired by this freedom of creativity, the debut Sorbet album This Was Paradise features a host of collaborators orbiting around Chris's nucleus, in which he flexes his ability as a composer and technician in equal measure. These collaborations include vocal features from Maija Sofia, Mark McCambridge (Arborist), and Mícheál Keating (Bleeding Heart Pigeons) as well as powerful instrumental performances from musicians working in the jazz and classical world poached by Chris, such as jazz saxophonist Lara Jones and upright bass player Jack Kelly. Jones and Kelly feature on lead single "I Heard His Scythe", a song which slices through the despair with an optimistic nihilism that is central to the record. Featuring a musical backing that nods to Kate Bush's "Watching You Without Me" alongside Maija Sofia's airy refrain rebutting the grim reaper. All of this sonic looseness is bound tightly by the concept behind This Was Paradise: a rumination on humanity's precarious position in a living purgatory. "We're stuck between Paradise and Hell, always swinging between the two as a result of how we behave towards each other and our planet." This duality is represented in the binary use of electronic and acoustic instruments, especially in the case of album closer "(Hell)" -- a recording split right down the middle between a string quartet and four synthesizers. "Aesthetically I wanted to hang in the balance of electronic and acoustic composition: between the natural world and humanity's imprint on it." Therein lies the central theme of This Was Paradise -- an album littered with references to Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost which opens with Adam being expelled from the Garden of Eden for "Man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree."
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CD
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BB 368CD
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Irish producer Chris W Ryan (Just Mustard, NewDad, Robocobra Quartet) began releasing music under the moniker Sorbet in 2020 with the express intention to cleanse the palate; both for the listener and himself. Spending much of his time in the studio with other artists, Chris took inspiration from producer-led albums like Brian Eno's Another Green World: "I love the way you can hear the playful interaction between friends on an album like that --there are none of the constraints or rules that you might have when you're trying to represent the sound of a live band or artist." Exploring freely across genre bounds, the world of Sorbet is informed by electronic music just as much as classical and alt-pop, with nods to artists like Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, Kate Bush, and David Byrne. Inspired by this freedom of creativity, the debut Sorbet album This Was Paradise features a host of collaborators orbiting around Chris's nucleus, in which he flexes his ability as a composer and technician in equal measure. These collaborations include vocal features from Maija Sofia, Mark McCambridge (Arborist), and Mícheál Keating (Bleeding Heart Pigeons) as well as powerful instrumental performances from musicians working in the jazz and classical world poached by Chris, such as jazz saxophonist Lara Jones and upright bass player Jack Kelly. Jones and Kelly feature on lead single "I Heard His Scythe", a song which slices through the despair with an optimistic nihilism that is central to the record. Featuring a musical backing that nods to Kate Bush's "Watching You Without Me" alongside Maija Sofia's airy refrain rebutting the grim reaper. All of this sonic looseness is bound tightly by the concept behind This Was Paradise: a rumination on humanity's precarious position in a living purgatory. "We're stuck between Paradise and Hell, always swinging between the two as a result of how we behave towards each other and our planet." This duality is represented in the binary use of electronic and acoustic instruments, especially in the case of album closer "(Hell)" -- a recording split right down the middle between a string quartet and four synthesizers. "Aesthetically I wanted to hang in the balance of electronic and acoustic composition: between the natural world and humanity's imprint on it." Therein lies the central theme of This Was Paradise -- an album littered with references to Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost which opens with Adam being expelled from the Garden of Eden for "Man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree."
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12"
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BB 358EP
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12" version. Sorbet is a new project from producer, drummer, and vocalist Chris W Ryan (Robocobra Quartet). The first release via Bureau B, Life Variations EP is a suite of three tracks borne from the same musical seed. A presumptuous thing to tackle across 20 minutes, Life Variations EP negotiates birth, death, and that part in between. "Not just human life, but the life of planets or our environment -- and the death and birth of personal identity; of sexuality or gender." Lead single "Birth (My First Day)" is a celebration of beginnings. Explosions of reverb and breakbeat drum kits are all borne out of manipulations in ProTools, an audio software traditionally for recording and mixing studio performances. Working predominantly as a producer in recording studios and concert halls across the country, Ryan opts to use a tool he knows and re-imagine its usage. Pushing a software like ProTools to its limits and making it a creative tool instead of a utilitarian one is at the core of the palate-cleansing sound of Sorbet -- a place where electronic and acoustic sounds have equal weight. "Death (This Year I Died)" is the shapeshifting centerpiece of Life Variations EP. Recorded in São Paulo when Ryan was there as the PRS Foundation Musician in Residence last year, it distills the cyclical essence of the EP to twelve beatific minutes. Melding scorched synth arps with hypnotic patterns that traverse the flux and form of noise, post-classical, and contemporary electronica, it's a triumph of heady, Technicolor experimentalism from a kind of musical auteur. While artists such as Laurie Anderson, Dan Deacon, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Björk make their imprint both musically and conceptually, Ryan fares a singularly self-referential sound-world in his savvy for magpie-ing: borrowing musical ideas from the likes of classical music and making field recordings of street preachers in São Paulo. Ryan even goes so far as to steal a stray snare drum or cymbal hit from his own vault of the hundreds of recordings he has done as a recording engineer and producer for the likes of Just Mustard, ex-magician and the Ulster Orchestra. Life Variations ends with a type of coda in the form of "Living / Dying". One last presentation of that same chord progression, this time paired with a kind of voice-of-god in the form of Mark McCambridge of Arborist.
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CD
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BB 358CD
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Sorbet is a new project from producer, drummer, and vocalist Chris W Ryan (Robocobra Quartet). The first release via Bureau B, Life Variations EP is a suite of three tracks borne from the same musical seed. A presumptuous thing to tackle across 20 minutes, Life Variations EP negotiates birth, death, and that part in between. "Not just human life, but the life of planets or our environment -- and the death and birth of personal identity; of sexuality or gender." Lead single "Birth (My First Day)" is a celebration of beginnings. Explosions of reverb and breakbeat drum kits are all borne out of manipulations in ProTools, an audio software traditionally for recording and mixing studio performances. Working predominantly as a producer in recording studios and concert halls across the country, Ryan opts to use a tool he knows and re-imagine its usage. Pushing a software like ProTools to its limits and making it a creative tool instead of a utilitarian one is at the core of the palate-cleansing sound of Sorbet -- a place where electronic and acoustic sounds have equal weight. "Death (This Year I Died)" is the shapeshifting centerpiece of Life Variations EP. Recorded in São Paulo when Ryan was there as the PRS Foundation Musician in Residence last year, it distills the cyclical essence of the EP to twelve beatific minutes. Melding scorched synth arps with hypnotic patterns that traverse the flux and form of noise, post-classical, and contemporary electronica, it's a triumph of heady, Technicolor experimentalism from a kind of musical auteur. While artists such as Laurie Anderson, Dan Deacon, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Björk make their imprint both musically and conceptually, Ryan fares a singularly self-referential sound-world in his savvy for magpie-ing: borrowing musical ideas from the likes of classical music and making field recordings of street preachers in São Paulo. Ryan even goes so far as to steal a stray snare drum or cymbal hit from his own vault of the hundreds of recordings he has done as a recording engineer and producer for the likes of Just Mustard, ex-magician and the Ulster Orchestra. Life Variations ends with a type of coda in the form of "Living / Dying". One last presentation of that same chord progression, this time paired with a kind of voice-of-god in the form of Mark McCambridge of Arborist.
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