Remix of Julien Marchal

When I collaborated with pleq (see here) on his remix of Ben Lukas Boysen, there was also some beautiful additional piano contributed by French pianist Julien Marchal. We vowed to work together more in the future, and Julien kindly invited me to remix one of his pieces from his album INSIGHT II (and prodded me when I dragged my feet).

So here it finally is! There is also a Q&A available at Julien's site with some, er, "insight" into the creative process behind this remix, and my work more broadly.

Collaboration with pleq

Finally available is the new EP from Polish artist Bartosz Dziadosz aka pleq, featuring one track for which I recorded some multi-tracked cello parts. It's a beautiful slowed-down remix of a Ben Lukas Boysen (aka Hecq), the original piano augmented by French pianist Julien Marchal. The overdubbed parts were improvised in our respective studios by us, and Bartosz added washes of sound and extra-twinkly production.

A video of our track was made by Ken Hirama.

The EP is available on Canadian post-classical/electronic label Moderna Records now:

vale – new track for streaming

A couple of years ago I recorded an album over two weekend sessions at the beautiful Music Feeds Studio, with engineering and mixing help from Chris Hancock. It's less electronic than a lot of my other stuff – much of it was aimed at realising my multi-layered looping pieces in lush acoustic multi-tracked recordings.
But the other half are extravagant pieces jammed, overdubbed, mixed and overdubbed right there in the studio.

I'm yet to release the album – entitled the night is dark, the night is silent, the night is bright, the night is loud. Once I've remixed a few tracks a little bit, I'll send it out into the world (maybe a like-minded label will help me there)… In the meantime, you can stream this track, which mixes up faux-guitar cello, rapturous arco fragments, helium harmonics and a couple of field recordings.

the ebb and flow

Superlux Photos_32
I've been working on some music in collaboration with Damian Gascoigne, who, as well as being the director of UTS's Bachelor of Design Animation, is a talented and groundbreaking animator in his own right. The first public fruits of his current work are currently showing as a projection-mapped installation on the beautiful spiral staircase inside Customs House in Sydney as part of SuperLux (Smart Light Cities) – and you should be able to hear an ambient looping version of my music as part of the installation.

In conjunction, I've released a two-track single featuring the original track and an extended, further-manipulated ambient dub mix as a pay-what-you-like single on Bandcamp:

Lisa Gerrard & Peter Hollo live at TEDxSydney

I was recently asked to perform with the wonderful Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance at the annual TEDxSydney. After some brief email conversations, we met the night before the event, had a chat and determined that it would be as spontaneous as possible. We discussed a few ideas, soundchecked, and that was it!
Slightly nerve-wracking on the day, but I'm pretty happy with the results – and very happy that the TEDx & Sydney Opera House teams captured the sound (and vision) so well! (And James Orr's excellent live sound no doubt had a lot to do with it too.)

End-of-year happenings, start-of-year happenings

Some things coming up!
On Friday the 19th of December I'm supporting and playing with Ben Fink & Dale Caldwell's sparse anti-folk act Close to Forever. Should be a magical evening.

And on January 30th (also a Friday), I'll be playing a quite different gig courtesy of Tenzenmen at Black Wire, supporting Hinterlandt Ensemble and Beijing's Guiguisuisui, rounded out by Milkk. Can't wait!
Sadly had to pull out of this show due to certain FourPlay happenings with Neil Gaiman…

I do have a whole unreleased studio album sitting around wanting a good home. It's different, but I'm sure you'll like it. Stay tuned…

Playing at Sounds Like This in Parramatta, September

I'll be playing a solo set at Matt Wakeling's new gig series Sounds Like This on Saturday the 27th of September.
Doors are 7:30pm, and it's only $10. Venue is the Mars Hill Cafe, 331 Church Street, Parramatta. Matt himself is also playing, along with beatsmith/producer Sails aka Joshua Isaac.

Should be a good one! I'll be doing a straight cello + laptop set. And I did an in-depth(!) interview with Matt the other night to promote the show.

New track with Sophie Hutchings

I have a new track with Sophie Hutchings on this wonderful compilation of post-classical, drone & electronics on the Moscow label Dronarivm.
We recorded it at the Cafe Church in Glebe one night with just a stereo pair of mics, positioned near the piano, and I walked with the cello at the beginning and end to provide some true spatial dynamics. As with everything I do with Sophie, it's half-composed, half-improvised. And no electronics here.

We're at track 6, along with a pretty awesome array of other artists.

New raven album on the way…

I've been recording at the old Megaphon studio in St Peters – now Music Lines – with the fabulous Mr Chris Hancock, towards a new album. This time I'm looking at sending it out to some like-minded labels rather than self-releasing.

Perhaps half the tracks are loop-based works painstakingly rendered in ProTools, and half are entirely studio-created, composed on the fly on cello, piano, pieces of metal and wood, synthesisers, out-board effects and computers.
It's been exhilarating and we haven't even started mixing yet!

I'll post one or two tracks as sneak previews once they're ready…

PS Oh also, raven is on Facebook now :)

Tivoli, NY

While travelling in the US in November, I played a few fun improv gigs with different people, did some recording for my friend Tim Condon's amazing krautrock/noise band Fresh Snow, and recorded a little nachtmusik in a tiny cottage in a tiny town in upstate New York.
Here 'tis, unfiltered and unedited (well, there's 3 cello layers there):