ICELAND’S INFLUENTIAL RECORD LABEL AND COLLECTIVE TAKES MEMBERS OF ITS ROSTER ON THE ROAD FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2010. 

In celebration of Bedroom Community’s 10th Anniversary in 2016, members of the collective come together in a series of live performances known as the Whale Watching Tour.

A Whale Watching Tour of the United States in March and April 2016 marks the beginning of a number of shows that will culminate in a series of events at this year’s Iceland Airwaves Festival in November 2016, and stretches over to April 2017 when the collective will perform at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. This upcoming run of intermittent concerts marks the third Whale Watching Tour, and the first since a European adventure in 2010 that saw the tour disrupted by the infamous ash-cloud spewed out of Eyjafjallajökull, and resulted in the documentary film Everything Everywhere All The Time.

Bedroom Community was founded in 2006 by composer and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson as a place for like-minded artists to create and release otherwise unreleasable music. The Whale Watching Tour is an unusual and ambitious premise. The artists, — who are friends and colleagues and frequently contribute to each other’s recordings — present what often is more like a musical conversation with aspects of a show-and-tell than a formal concert.

Each run of shows, or individual concerts, is customised and curated by Bedroom Community’s founder Valgeir, the producer behind all of the label’s output. The lineup of these concerts is flexible and can vary greatly from show to show. Typically, 6-10 musicians share the stage in what is a scalable, fluid 90 - 120 minute showcase of music that spans the Bedroom Community catalog, and introduces unreleased or specifically rearranged pieces as well as classics from the repertoire.

“The Whale Watching Tour is an opportunity to manifest what we, as a record label and a collective of disparate musical personalities, do behind the closed doors of the studio. To create something uniquely belonging to the live experience from source material that is very familiar to us. These shows are fuelled by joyful energyand appreciation for each other but also tension, blood and sweat that makes it all the more rewarding at the end of the day.”- VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON

“Valgeir’s brilliance in establishing and curating this label is in taking music that would otherwise be homeless, and giving it not just a home but an environment where it is smashed up against other music — sometimes radically juxtaposed, but always in a way that communicates to listeners.” - NICO MUHLY

10 years of Bedroom Community at the Barbican - Friday 07 October Tickets

with Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Daníel Bjarnason, composition and piano Sam Amidon vocals, fiddle, banjo, guitar, Nadia Sirota viola, Liam Byrne viola da gamba, Sæunn Thorsdteinsdóttir cello, Jodie Landau vocals, percussion

About Bedroom Community:

Bedroom Community is an Icelandic record label/collective founded in 2006 by Valgeir Sigurðsson, with Nico Muhly and Ben Frost. Today the roster also includes Sam Amidon, Daníel Bjarnason, Puzzle Muteson, Paul Corley, Nadia Sirota, James McVinnie, Emily Hall,Jodie Landau, and wildUp.

The collective spirit of Bedroom Community is its most precious resource. The roster is made up of creatively diverse artists who are drawn to the murky spaces between genres, and who uniformly support one another’s forays into this murk. Whether on tour, within the confines of Greenhouse Studios on the outskirts of Reykjavík, or on any of the individual artist’s many ambitious projects that have to date seen them reach far and wide, into the most important corners of contemporary music, and working with many of today’s pioneering artists across fields ranging from art house cinema, to opera, theatre, fine art, Hollywood and beyond.

A collaborative foundation is beneath everything Bedroom Community does. 

Float PR x Piano Day

Float PR presents an evening of piano, art, film and honey for Piano Day 2016

MONDAY 28TH MARCH 2016
De Montford Suite In Town Hall Hotel
London E2 9NF

Doors: 7pm
Performances: 7.30pm - 9.00pm
End: 10.00pm

Official Partner: Drowned In Sound // Official Sponsor: Late Night Tales

Anna Rose Carter - Piano Performance

Anna Rose Carter is a modern classical, minimalist pianist and one half of experimental duo Moon Ate The Dark. Anna will perform a solo piano set made up of new compositions, existing pieces and works in progress.

Ed Harcourt - Piano Performance

Ed Harcourt is a songwriter of ill repute. For piano day he will premiere some new material from his forthcoming seventh album, set for release later this year.

Lily Hunter Green - Bee Composed - Piano Performance and Violin

Lily Hunter Green, a sound installation artist will perform on the piano with violinist Tom Moore against a backdrop of bee recordings as well as present to the audience how her project 'Bee Composed' which which saw her place a beehive inside a piano, has helped increase awareness of the declining bee population.

Michael Salu - 'Nocturnes' - Short Film Premiere

Michael Salu an award-winning Creative Director, writer and visual artist will present the exclusive first play of 'Nocturnes', a specially commissioned short film created for Piano Day in collaboration with Float PR.

Robert Kaniepien - Tendencies - Painting on Canvas

Robert Kaniepien aka RK.Polak will create a bespoke piece of art across the evening on a 160cm x 160cm canvas using oil pastels, acrylic, enamel and pencil. The piece will be a continuation of his series called 'Tendencies'.

ROLI Seaboard RISE - Live Audio-Visual Performance

Musician and creative coder Felix Faire presents a real time audio visual performance using the ROLI Seaboard RISE, a radically new musical instrument that reimagines the piano keyboard as a soft, continuous surface and puts expression back at your fingertips.  

With special thanks to all the performers, Sofia Ilyas of Float PR, Kayleigh of Town Hall Hotel, Naile Muslu of Waggon Design, Nils Frahm and many others!

The poster was designed by Waggon Design and the image, is of an installation created by Lily Hunter Green to exhibit the material taken from inside the Piano Hive. The installation was located on the Henry Moore Lawn at Aldeburgh Music in 2014.


Adolescent reveals new ‘Mutter’ EP out April 8th

Adolescent is 25-year-old London based Alex Parish, working with electronic and modern-classical music.

His forthcoming EP ‘Mutter’ marks his first physical release - a limited run of 250 Oxblood Coloured Vinyl. The record features four songs written over the course of a year, in which Alex began to experience behavioural changes as result of an anti-Epilepsy drug, known as Keppra.  

“I hadn’t intended to write a collection of songs about the drug’s affect on me; I found it an isolating experience. I was experiencing severe drops in mood without knowing why; Keppra was causing episodes of depression. I had to gradually stop the drug, and soon after I realised a theme in my song writing, a collection of songs that were an honest and open  depiction of my erratic mood.”

Mutter is as abrasive in parts, as it is quiet and reflective in others. Alex works with a mix of contemporary and classical instrumentation. Early demos drew inspiration from years of listening to composers such as Ludovico Euinaudi and Yann Tiersen, though Alex revisited the likes of Deftones’ White Pony and Portishead’s Dummy during the writing process, resulting in an abrasive electronic sound. The EP was re-recorded at The Square, Hoxton.  

The emotions portrayed within Mutter are relatable to anyone, the concept shouldn’t dictate the songs’ meaning to the listener.  Mutter’s visuals are equally considered. The cover art was painted by Caylon LaMantia, depicting an unfinished portrait of Alex’s Mother. The painting remains unfinished to resemble the way in which Temporal Lobe Epilepsy causes people to appear as unfamiliar objects during a seizure, as well as experiencing memory loss.


CARHARTT WIP x MAHOGANI

ARTIST: Mahogani Music
RELEASE DATE: 26 February 2016 
FORMAT: 7"

Carhartt WIP proudly presents a small and soulful collection in cooperation with none other than Detroit’s finest Kenny Dixon Jr aka Moodymann. The long standing DJ and producer is globally famed for pioneering his own house and genre-bending electronic music productions, remixes for artists like Lana Del Rey or Junior Boys, his unique DJ skills and his groundbreaking record labels like KDJ, Mahogani, NFD and Private Collection. Together with Carhartt WIP he now launches a compact clothing collection accompanied by a very special, limited UDG DJ bag. The garments consist of two long sleeve shirts - the MMC Detroit Soul Skate and MMC Set U Free T-Shirts – and the MMC Triple Logo T-Shirt. Each shirt toys around with iconic graphics from Moodymann’s larger than life record labels Mahogani Music and KDJ Records. His limited Carhartt WIP x Mahogani Music UDG Sling Bag Trolley Deluxe is specially designed to protect your vinyl and DJ gear during travelling. With a capacity up to 60 records, this bag is perfect for mobile vinyl DJs. It comes in the classic Carhartt Brown Dearborn Canvas 12oz. To complete the liaison a limited 7inch vinyl will hit the Carhartt WIP stores. It features a KDJ classic in a never released short version: Moodymann’s “J.A.N.” from 2001. On the B-Side the track “5800 Cass Ave.” hangs out – a brand new Moodymann tune that refers to a special address in his hometown and that comes with a running time of exactly 3.13 Minutes!

Tracklisting:

1. J.A.N.
2. 5800 Cass Ave.