Soulsavers

SOULSAVERS will release their new album Kubrick through San Quentin on 4th December 2015. Self-produced and recorded at various studios around the world, including Sunset Sound, Real World and Air Studios, the album will be available on vinyl, CD and as a download.

“Like a lot of people, I have phases of obsession, whether it’s about albums, musicians or film directors”, admits the quietly laconic Rich Machin, one half, alongside Ian Glover, of esteemed production duo and orchestral rock combo Soulsavers. “A while ago, I quite casually started revisiting some of Stanley Kubrick’s films, and pretty soon I was watching them all. I found myself really relishing Kubrick’s amazing attention to detail and how each film had it’s own completely unique mood. I’d wanted to make an instrumental record for ages… I found I could draw on these different moods as starting points for the music.”

Thus was born Kubrick, an extraordinarily poignant, unashamedly beautiful instrumental Soulsavers album whose sumptuous strings, opulent woodwinds, resonant drums and soaring organ, piano and guitar melodies offer an often subtle, sometimes epically cinematic seduction. Each of the album’s eight, dextrously arranged essays is named after a different character from the iconic oeuvre of maverick moviemaker Stanely Kubrick, but, Machin is keen to point out, the album is not so much a musical homage to the director’s films as a journey into the kinds of emotional landscape and all-embracing atmosphere the great auteur delighted in creating.

Designing bespoke, uniquely immersive recording experiences has been Soulsavers’ calling for a decade and a half, now. Their story begins at the turn of the millennium, with Messrs. Machin and Glover teaming up as a production and remix unit before embarking on their own material. Their 2003 debut album, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, expanded their remit into song, with vocals from Josh Haden, of slow-core combo Spain, while the ensuing, critic-enchanting It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Way You Land, from 2007, wedded gospel, rock, jazz, country and more into a uniquely simmering stew, topped off with saturnine vocals from erstwhile Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, alongside contributions from The London Community Gospel Choir, Will Oldham and Doves’ Jimi Goodwin.