Label: Audiokult Recordings, Vienna, Austria Artist: Ben Neill Album: Horizonal Release date: September 15, 2015 Contact: [email protected]
Horizonal is a new album by electronic music innovator Ben Neill featuring his self-designed computer interactive mutantrumpet. The recording is an ambient journey that blends Neill’s richly timbral melodies and textures with glitchy, minimal beats and deep sub bass lines. Using the unique palette of sounds generated by his instrument, Neill incorporates elements of future garage and deep house while keeping an ambient, reflective vibe with jazzy overtones. Guest artists appearing on the record are guitar wizard Gary Lucas, (Future Sound of London, Captain Beefheart) and saxophonist/sonic ecologist David Rothenberg. In addition to 5 original songs, the album includes a cover version of Sweetness and Light, written and recorded by the 1990’s shoegaze band Lush.
Neill has been active as a composer/performer in New York City since the mid 1980’s when he worked with synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog to develop the first version of his instrument. He has previously released 9 albums on labels including Astralwerks, Verve, Six Degrees and Thirsty Ear. Horizonal is his first release since the 2011 Songs for Persephone, a collaboration with vocalist Mimi Goese released on Ramseur Records. Neill has performed his music in wide ranging venues, from concert halls and jazz festivals to experimental art spaces and dance clubs. He has been called “a creative composer and genius performer” (Time Out NY),"the mad scientist of dancefloor jazz" (CMJ), and "a musical powerhouse, a serious and individual talent" (Time Out London). The Demo, his recent electronic opera created with composer/performer Mikel Rouse, was premiered in April at the Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University. Neill is also leading performances of The Second Dream by La Monte Young in New York, Warsaw, Paris and Huddersfield in 2015.
Neill performs the music from Horizonal live in a variety of configurations including solo, with drums, guitar, and/or sax. The show also can include interactive digital video created from paintings by Los Angeles-based painter Andy Moses’ art, controlled live by Neill’s mutantrumpet. For more information contact Audiokult Recordings: [email protected] Label website: http://www.audiokult.at/ Ben Neill website: http://www.benneill.com Ben Neill email: [email protected]
BEN NEILL - BIOGRAPHY
BEN NEILL is a composer, performer, producer, and inventor of the mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro- acoustic instrument. Widely recognized as a musical innovator, he has been called “a creative composer and genius performer” (Time Out NY),"the mad scientist of dancefloor jazz" (CMJ), and "a musical powerhouse, a serious and individual talent" (Time Out London). Neill's music blends influences from electronica, jazz and contemporary classical music, blurring the lines between DJ culture and acoustic instrument performance.
The Demo, Neill’s electronic opera created in collaboration with composer/performer Mikel Rouse, was premiered at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall in April 2015. The Demo re-imagines computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart’s prophetic 1968 demonstration of emerging computer technologies such as the mouse, electronic messaging, video conferencing and word processing as a technologically infused performance. The piece employs a live network of interactive systems and instruments to reflect on the origin of those technologies. The Demo received a Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund grant in 2015, and was developed at the University of Illinois and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The premiere received international press attention from major news outlets including the New York Times, Wired, and the Daily Mail in London.
Neill has recorded nine CDs of his music on the Universal/Verve, Thirsty Ear, Astralwerks, Six Degrees, Ramseur, New Tone and Ear-Rational labels. In 2010 his music theater work Persephone was presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival. Songs for Persephone, a CD of music from the theatrical production, was released in 2011 on Ramseur Records to critical acclaim. Neill has performed extensively in a wide variety of international settings including Lincoln Center, Cite de la Musique Paris, Moogfest, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival, to name a few. He has worked closely with many musical luminaries including John Cage, LaMonte Young, John Cale, Pauline Oliveros, Mikel Rouse, Rhys Chatham, DJ Spooky, David Berhman, Mimi Goese, Page Hamilton, Nicolas Collins, and David Rothenberg.
Neill began developing the mutantrumpet in the early 1980s. Initially an acoustic instrument (a combination of 3 trumpets and a trombone combined into one), he integrated the instrument with electronics when collaborating with the synthesizer inventor Robert Moog. In 1992, while in residency at the STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) research and development lab for new instruments in Amsterdam, Neill made the mutantrumpet fully computer interactive. In 2008 he created a new version of his instrument at STEIM, and returned there in 2014 to design yet another version which will be completed in 2015.
Other aspects of Neill’s musical career include scoring for films and numerous national television commercials for leading brands such as Cadillac and Volkwagen. He “made music industry history” in 2002 (MSNBC News) by releasing Automotive, an album comprised of extended versions of music he originally wrote for Volkswagen TV and Internet commercials. He supported the release of the album by performing on an 18 city tour of the House of Blues and other major music venues in the US and Canada. The project was an innovative example of music and branding which is documented by author Timothy Taylor in his book The Sounds of Capitalism.
Neill is also active as a sound and installation artist. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries including Sandra Gering Gallery New York, Exit Art New York, Wellcome Gallery London, the American Museum of Natural History, and Paula Cooper Gallery. ITSOFOMO, his major collaborative piece with the late artist David Wojnarowicz, has been presented widely in venues such as The Tate Modern London, The Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, The New Museum New York and PPOW Gallery New York, and was featured in the PBS documentary Imagining America. A limited edition vinyl version will be released in October 2015.
A native of North Carolina, Neill is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music. He studied composition with minimalist composer La Monte Young and has led many performances of Young’s work in the 1980s and 90s, and in 2015 will lead concerts in New York, Warsaw, Paris, and Huddersfield. In May 2015 he was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. Since 2008 he has been a music professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
BEN NEILL PRESS QUOTES
“Ben Neill is using a schizophrenic trumpet to create art music for the people.” Wired Magazine
“Ben Neill performs on the Mutantrumpet, a super-instrument of his own design that he also uses to control lights and other elements in The Demo. The music is a dense, continuously-shifting tapestry of electronic beats.” Wired Magazine
“Masterfully blurs the lines between electronic dance music and jazz sounds” Billboard
“The Demo offers hints of the era through sounds of protests and musical allusions to 1960s psychedelia and West Coast jazz. But the heavy beats are more reminiscent of Electronic Dance Music, transplanting the piece to the present day.” London Daily Mail
“A creative composer, genius performer, and inventor of the mutantrumpet.” Time Out NY
“Ben Neill is a musical powerhouse, a serious and individual talent.” Time Out London
“Neill’s astonishing mutantrumpet blends brass and computer with wit, beauty and solid musicianship.” Village Voice
“9 out of 10 rating…Ben Neill is a mad scientist, and he has discovered the formula that breaks musical barriers. “ Mixmag
“Night Science is forward-sounding and wildly beat-conscious; it's a creation that looks at rhythm, jazz, African funk, grime, and dubstep with fresh ears and a bold compositional sensibility that extends both soundworld science and electronic music to a horizon that extends as far as the ear -- and the imagination -- can hear.” All Music Guide
“Ben Neill plays an instrument he designed called the mutantrumpet, a three-belled trumpet that allows him to shift sonorities instantaneously, from muted to open, clear to froggy.” New York Times
“Neill works with harmonies based on numerical relationships that produce spiritually powerful resonances. The result is trippy, otherworldly and seamlessly groovy.” Interview Magazine
“Ben Neill is the mad scientist of dancefloor jazz…an inventive and stimulating voyage.” CMJ Monthly
“Calling Ben Neill a trumpeter is like calling Mr. Spock a frequent flyer…as vibrant as the galaxies beyond, both adventurous and artful.” Boston Phoenix
“If he were around today, Miles would unequivocally be picking up on what Ben Neill s is laying down.” All About Jazz
“Ben Neill’s ambient groovescapes are eventful and action-packed journeys” Hudson Valley Almanac
“The hypnotic score by Ben Neill and Mimi Goese is a romantic swell of symphonic brass and percussion that rises and falls like an unstoppable tidal wave.” Variety
“Abstract, hexagonal, world-beat songs…If Baz Lurhmann and Laurie Anderson got stoned listening to late-night college-radio electro-pop, Persephone is what they’d hallucinate.” NY Magazine
“At its bewitching best Persephone evokes a French neoclassical painting that has magically bloomed into three dimensions…shimmery electro-pop songs sung by Ms. Goese in a throaty voice that recalls Kate Bush and a number of other alt-radio goddesses.” NY Times
“A multimedia musical extrav-o-rama…like Moulin Rouge with a soundtrack by Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance.” Culturebot
“A raucous orchestra of romantic 19th-century-born instruments swells and deflates…symphonic sounds with rock and trip-hop elements.” NY Press
“Goese and Neill make art songs for the indie set, fusing melodies by classical composers—Berlioz, Strauss, Grieg, and more—with fresh lyrics on Songs for Persephone. The result is ageless and arresting music.” Utne Reader