COMPOSER-saxophonist Samuel Sharp – an artist who has mostly up to this point released his work under the nom-de-musique Lossy, and whose collaborative curriculum vitae includes live work with artists as diverse as Hackney Colliery Band, Brooklyn indie rock outfit Augustines, and the poet Hollie McNish, and studio session and remix work with Radiohead’s Phil Selway; composer of the soundtrack to The Bridge, Uno Helmersson; and Britsoul singer Beverley Knight, has today released a two-track single in preparation for an album to be released early next year. You can have a listen to a track, below.
“Fireworks From The Tower” is the lead track; we find Samuel blowing clear and true with an in-the-pocket melody brought into a different realm with judicious delay, allowing the melodies to expand and repeat and cross-fertilise. It’s a lovely piece, jazz with a Rudy Van Gelder clarity of tone and brightness arcing into a more experimental dub world.
It captures in sound the night Samuel played a gig at the restaurant atop London’s BT Tower one November the fifth.
He recalls: “We had full 360-degree views of all of the fireworks displays right across London; which rather than the start-stop oohs and aahs you normally get, instead provided a constant stream of beautiful lights across the capital.”
He captures the gradual build of these nocturnal explosive patterns in different cascades of melody, rising and falling, dying away, the incandescent bursts caught in sound. Nice.
The digital ‘flip’, “Longdown Hill”, is named for a road in Buckinghamshire that Samuel frequented while studying A-level music.
“This is my favourite all-time road to drive on: a stunning wooded hill that inspires all year round,” he says.
“I started with the school term in autumn, leaves exploding as I raced along, followed by the harshness of winter, the promise of spring and the tension/release of summer with exams and holidays all mixed in together”.
It’s another dubby autobiographical essay in which the majesty of an open road across the high broadleaf ridge of the Chilterns is written in sound.
While we wait for further news of the upcoming album, you can follow Samuel at his website, at Bandcamp, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and at his label, Bootcycle Audio.
