Kubrick

Description

Soulsavers will release their new album Kubrick through San Quentin on 4th December. Self-produced and recorded at various studios around the world, including Sunset Sound, Real World and Air Studios, the album will be available on vinyl, CD and as a download. Kubrick follows the release this month of a second collaboration with Depeche Modes Dave Gahan. Entitled Angels & Ghosts, the album is released through Columbia Records on 23rd October.

Like a lot of people, I have phases of obsession, whether its about albums, musicians or film directors, admits the quietly laconic Rich Machin, one half, alongside Ian Glover, of esteemed production duo and orchestral rock combo Soulsavers. A while ago, I quite casually started revisiting some of Stanley Kubricks films, and pretty soon I was watching them all. I found myself really relishing Kubricks amazing attention to detail and how each film had its own completely unique mood. Id wanted to make an instrumental record for ages I found I could draw on these different moods as starting points for the music.

Thus was born Kubrick, an extraordinarily poignant, unashamedly beautiful instrumental Soulsavers album whose sumptuous strings, opulent woodwinds, resonant drums and soaring organ, piano and guitar melodies offer an often subtle, sometimes epically cinematic seduction. Each of the albums eight, dextrously arranged essays is named after a different character from the iconic oeuvre of maverick moviemaker Stanely Kubrick, but, Machin is keen to point out, the album is not so much a musical homage to the directors films as a journey into the kinds of emotional landscape and all-embracing atmosphere the great auteur delighted in creating.

Kubrick is an album whose sonic luxury is matched by its intensity of feeling and the immediacy and raw emotion of Machins writing and arrangements. With classical or orchestral music, I think there can sometimes be too much of a sense of perfectionism; it can be sonically amazing but rather sterile and lifeless to listen to, says Machin. We wanted to capture the spirit and immediacy of a rocknroll or band record, and not try to overwork everything. We didnt want to Pro-Tools it to death If a take had some minor technical flaws but had the right feeling, wed use it anyway. I actually like human noises and textures in music. I like it when you can hear the viola player breathing

Designing bespoke, uniquely immersive recording experiences has been Soulsavers calling for a decade and a half, now. Their story begins at the turn of the millennium, with Messrs. Machin and Glover teaming up as a production and remix unit before embarking on their own material. Their 2003 debut album, Tough Guys Dont Dance, expanded their remit into song, with vocals from Josh Haden, of slow-core combo Spain, while the ensuing, critic-enchanting Its Not How Far You Fall, Its the Way You Land, from 2007, wedded gospel, rock, jazz, country and more into a uniquely simmering stew, topped off with saturnine vocals from erstwhile Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, alongside contributions from The London Community Gospel Choir, Will Oldham and Doves Jimi Goodwin.

Broken followed in 2009, cementing the bands reputation and garnering widespread encomium as Mark Lanegan once again fronted the songs, alongside Will Oldham, Spritualizeds Jason Pierce, Faith No Mores Mike Patton, Richard Hawley and the Butthole Surfers Gibby Haynes. 2012s gleamingly produced The Light The Dead Sea offered another departure, with Lanegans frontman baton being handed on to Depeche Mode vocalist, and avowed Soulsavers fan, Dave Gahan the two combos having toured together in 2010.

Aside from the albums, Soulsavers music has been, and continues to be, regularly aired on prime-time television shows such as Greys Anatomy, CSI: NY, Lie To Me, Mercy, Eastbound & Down, In Treatment and Friday Night Lights, among many others.