"I’m no more a musician than I’m a photographer, filmmaker or writer, although I work in each of those fields. For me, the medium of expression is almost interchangeable – that photograph, that song, that poem – they’re all saying the same thing. "
-Richard Skelton
taken from interview here.
-Richard Skelton
taken from interview here.
a
broken
consort.
box
of
birch
broken
consort.
box
of
birch
from TLOBF here.
Richard Skelton is an artist from Lancashire in the UK. He started his Sustain-Release Private Press in 2005 as a commemorative tribute to his late wife Louise, with the intention of publishing her artwork alongside his own musical offerings. Since its inception he has released a slew of raw, beautiful recordings presented in lovingly-assembled, individualised editions.
It is with A Broken Consort, perhaps, that Skelton most-assuredly draws these elements together, creating an ever-changing drift of rich textures and interleaved melody that effortlessly evokes the landscapes which inspired it. Box Of Birch, his second album in this guise, was originally published in a boxed edition that contained, among other things, birch twigs collected from the West Pennine Moors. For Skelton these things act as a synecdoche for the landscape itself, a physical connection to the places in which much of his music is recorded. In this new edition for Tompkins Square, Skelton has created an exclusive series of artworks which draw on the hidden histories of the English landscape, and their narratives of displacement and loss. The result is something which perfectly complements the music whilst adding another dimension, providing a fuller picture of the artist’s vision.
"I started Sustain-Release as a commemorative tribute to my late wife, Louise, who died in 2004. She was a talented artist, and bequeathed me a legacy in the form of her sketchbooks. The idea for a posthumous collaboration – a blend of my music and her artwork – was the driving force behind setting up the label. The adoption of pseudonyms reflects this collaborative nature of the work, by not identifying me as the sole author."