Matthew Bourne new album 'This is Not for You' on The Leaf Label
Matthew Bourne
This Is Not For You
New album released 12th July 2024 via The Leaf Label
Check out the title track here:https://theleaflabel.ffm.to/thisisnotforyou.OOW
Watch Bourne explain how the album came about.
“Spartan, hypnotic and beautiful, if gloriously unresolved” The Guardian
Matthew Bourne has been a busy man of late, but now he’s back at the piano and the world can start healing. Possibly.
Over the last twenty or so years, you’re as likely to find Bourne piloting Moogs, bothering cellos and harmoniums, covering Kraftwerk, Charlie Chaplin and Phil Collins, collaborating with the weather or unearthing rare Victorian keyboard instruments as you are “playing” the piano. His fingerprints are all over a huge number of diverse projects, having worked with the likes of Alabaster DePlume, Keith Tippett, Nils Frahm, MINING, Nightports and Mzlkypop, and playing a key role in Keeley Forsyth’s desolate and haunting works.
For such a restless and forward-thinking artist, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Bourne can be a little reluctant to return to the instrument on which he made his name. At least in public. That would be too easy.
This Is Not For You. is the first full-length Matthew Bourne album for solo piano since Isotach in 2017. These days Bourne tends to find himself seated at his first instrument when working on collaborations or commissions for film and television projects. It’s often in these moments that inspiration strikes and the pieces are committed to tape. With outside deadlines, those sparks can often be left. Forgotten about. Recorded over.
This is Not for You. was born from an off-hand comment by one of Matthew Bourne’s confidants. His instruction, “Do not delete,” provided Bourne with a commission of sorts, an ideal restriction to work within. Everything on the album was given a chance to shine in the studio, to be worked on amongst the freedom of that no deletion diktat - new inspirations now lie beside deep-mined remembrances. Cello and Dulcitone have been added sparingly for colour, but this is Bourne playing for his own enjoyment. Intimate. Reserved even. The real Matthew Bourne?
“I could just sit down and do other stuff… that sounds really arrogant but I don’t mean it in that way. This is the healing bit of the process for me - that’s why I sit at the piano. It’s a place of trust. It’s always there, and will always be there.”
The title track is out now, with the album to follow on July 12th.
This Is Not For You. is available to pre-order now on limited edition LP and CD, as well as digital.
Recorded at Matthew Bourne’s home studio in Airedale, Yorkshire.
1. This Is Not For You
2. Désinance IV.1 (for Tommi Grönlund)
3. To Francesca
4. The Mirror And Its Fragments
5. Only When It Is (In Memoriam Bill Kinghorn)
6. Eclipsis
7. Dissemble (for Brian Irvine)
8 Précipice / Précis
9. Dedicated To You, Because You Were Listening (In Memoriam Keith Tippett)
