(Photos by Diane Zillmer & Gareth Jones) Out May 21 via the newly revived Parallel Series of Mute is the debut album by Sunroof (aka Daniel Miller & Gareth Jones), “Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1”.
The new album, their first after four decades of friendship and collaboration, is a collection of eight improvised modular pieces recorded as live in various studio spaces across London. “Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1” will be available on limited edition clear vinyl, CD, and digital platforms.
You can listen to “1.2 30.5.19” right below.
Check also the previously released “1.1-7.5.19”.
About Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones
Daniel Miller (founder of Mute) met Gareth Jones back when Miller asked Jones to work with him in late 1982 on what became Depeche Mode’s “Construction Time Again”. After the band had gone home for the day, they would stay to work on their own sessions. That practice continued and, by the mid-nineties, Sunroof had emerged as remix project reworking the likes of Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, and appeared on a compilation paying tribute to Neu!.
Back in 2019, Miller and Jones were heading to a György Ligeti concert at the Barbican and beforehand – as they often do when together in the same city – the pair spent a couple of hours improvising with modular systems. Unusually, this time they decided to record the session and, over a pre-concert meal, Gareth asked a question that seems logical after all these years: “Are we actually going to make a record together before we die?”
The following day, they set themselves some rules: “We decided to get together to do a bunch of improvisations,” explains Gareth. “We said we’d work in a number of different physical spaces but always together, in the same room. We were keen to do shorter pieces because we were both very inspired by Chris Carter and Martin Gore’s electronic music projects, where the pieces were very concise and compact.”
Key to their manifesto was a distinction between an improvisation and a jam session. “With modular systems, you can just go on and on forever and never actually complete anything. Sometimes that’s okay – part of the joy of a modular is that you can just keep going indefinitely. But with this we were keen to actually finish something, so setting that timeframe became a really important rule for us,” adds Daniel.
Tracklisting
This will be the tracklisting of the tracks on “Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1”.
- 1.1 – 7.5.19
- 1.2 – 30.5.19
- 1.3 – 30.5.19
- 1.4 – 18.6.19
- 1.5 – 9.7.19
- 1.6 – 7.5.19
- 1.7 – 30.5.19
- 1.8 – 2.3.19
