Today, award-winning composer, pianist, and improvisor Elliot Galvin returns with details of his new album The Ruin, which will be released digitally on February 7 with a physical release to follow on February 28 via independent London tastemaker label Gearbox Records (Binker & Moses, Abdullah Ibrahim, Cahill//Costello). The album will mark Galvin’s first album since 2020’s Live at Fondation Louis Vuitton on Edition Records and follows his recent return single “From Beneath.”
HEAR / WATCH / SHARE “A House, a City”
An artist with little need for introductions, Elliot Galvin is a long-time trailblazer in the UK jazz firmament with four solo albums that have seen him top album of the year lists at the likes of DownBeat and Jazzwise, as well as being a member of the Mercury nominated Dinosaur, and collaborating with Shabaka Hutchings, Emma-Jean Thackray, Norma Winstone, Marius Neset and Mark Lockheart. Galvin has also earned a fierce reputation as a borderless improvisor having released records with the likes of Mark Sanders and his now labelmate Binker Golding. His latest solo release was an entirely improvised piano album and was named The Guardian’s album of the month and BBC Music Magazine’s album of the year. Outside of this Galvin is a composer Commissioned by the Sinfonietta, and an audio artist with works exhibited at the likes of Turner Contemporary Gallery, and more.
With his signing to Gearbox Records, The Ruin marks a new start for Galvin. Recorded in three sessions with GRAMMY-, Mercury-, and MOBO-Award nominated recording and mixing engineer Sonny Johns (Tony Allen, Ali Farka Touré, Laura Jurd), he says “this is the most personal album I have made to date, combining all the music that influences me, without worrying about genre or where it would sit. I feel it’s the purest expression of who I am on record.” The album also features a who’s who of estimable guest musicians and friends from the UK scene including renowned bassist and vocalist Ruth Goller, Polar Bear drummer and Patti Smith / Damon Albarn collaborator Sebastian Rochford, and longtime collaborators The Ligeti String Quartet.
The first taster of this new material came in the form of the aforementioned “From Beneath,” and is today followed up by “A House, A City.” Starting out with a reversed iPhone recording of Galvin’s final improvisation on his first-ever piano, before developing into a personal and delicate solo piece inspired by his home and memories of growing up.
The single is also accompanied by a dramatic new video which sees Galvin and filmmakers Arepo and James Holcombe set fire to an old upright piano. The video was filmed on analogue Bolex cameras, and the resulting film was then chemically degraded making it seem as if the fire from the piano is burning through the film itself. The concept ties in with the themes of ruin and the degradation of memory that are running throughout the record and represents Galvin deconstructing all he has done before in the search for something new.
Speaking on the single and video, Galvin says “Just before I sold my childhood piano, I sat down and recorded some improvisation on it. This was the instrument I started playing on and meant a lot to me, we managed to buy it by using some money from my grandfather after he passed away. There was one improvisation that I knew would be at the heart of an album, but it took about 5 years before I made it. There was a battered old piano in the studio where we were recording, and it felt right to record this piece on that. There is something fragile and beautiful about a piano that has lived a life. In the imperfections of the sound there is a humanity that is at the heart of this music.”
“The video was all shot entirely analogue and true to this original process of filming dating back to the 1920s. Right from the start we decided we wanted to set a piano on fire and film it. The album, and this track are about the ruins we live with, how we can construct something new from the ashes of what came before, but first we must burn it down, the creative act of destruction. After we dragged the piano into a field, set it on fire and filmed it, James processed the film in his darkroom, finishing it by using a technique called ‘Mordançage’ which introduces destructive chemicals to the film developing process, degrading the film in beautiful, unexpected ways.”
Named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem from the 9th century AD about the former glory of an unnamed ruined city, The Ruin is inspired by the feeling of living in England (“a country that feels like a living ruin”), the bleak landscape of where Galvin grew up (Medway towns), and a kind of self-portrait reflecting how we all live amongst the ruins of our past selves both collectively and individually. All the musical material on The Ruin is taken from iPhone recordings of improvisations that Galvin had played on his first-ever piano – bought using money left by his late grandfather. The whole album is structured cyclically so that it gradually builds up and crumbles away, starting and finishing with solo piano. To this end, the final track of the album finishes with the same reversed recording taken from the lead single and opener playing forwards.
“At the very heart of all the music is the first phrase I remember ever writing down as a child, which is a little chromatic thing. It all grows from there somehow” says Galvin. Now, in the present, the germination of that initial idea has resulted in a genre-defying, dynamic record which sees free-flowing serpentine piano and modular synth lines weave and collide around the record’s personnel with epiphanic vocalizations, deceivingly groove-heavy percussion, and intricate, soulful flute lines. The record leans into the gentle and introspective with an uneasy tension that simultaneously inspires hope and wistfulness, before erupting into droning slabs of noise that are at times redolent of the kosmische music movement.
Despite the candid and personal nature of the record, Elliot Galvin has succeeded where few other improvisors have. On The Ruin, he has produced possibly his most accessible to date, and one that almost all listeners can relate to on an intimate level. The Ruin may be tied inherently to Galvin, but anyone who listens can relate to the sense of self-contemplation and analysis, the memories that make us who we are and their degradation. The realization that much like the journey Galvin went on to create this album, we must continue to build ourselves up from the ruins only to break ourselves down again.
The Ruin is out digitally on February 7; and on CD and vinyl on February 28 via Gearbox Records
Tracklisting:
1. A House, A City
2. From Beneath
3. Still Under Storm
4. Gold Bright
5. Stone Houses
6. High and Wide
7. In Concentric Circles
8. As If By Weapons
9. Giants Corrupted
10. Fell Broadly
11. These Walls
Credits:
Elliot Galvin – Piano and Synths
The Ligeti String Quartet – Strings
Ruth Goller – Bass and Voice
Sebastian Rochford – Drums
Live dates:
February 2 – Hot Tin, Faversham
February 8 – Listen, Cambridge
February 12 – Lescar, Sheffield
February 13 – Assemble Rooms, Leeds
February 14 – The Rose Hill, Brighton
February 15 – Kings Place (Hall 1), London
February 16 – Mac, Birmingham
February 19 – Fasching, Stockholm, Sweden
February 20 – Unterfahrt, Munich
February 22 – Opus Jazz, Budapest
February 27 – Dora Stoutzker Concert Hall, Cardiff
February 28 – Brilliant Corners Festival, Belfast
March 1 – The Clinker, Dublin
March 26 – Spin Jazz Club, Oxford
March 27 – Freerange, Canterbury
