String and Tins Releases Debut Album

04/12/2023

String and Tins

Music & Sound

London, UK

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04/12/2023

‘Stills’ project tasked composers at String and Tins with creating a piece of music in response to a self-selected work of art exhibited in London’s Tate Britain Gallery

The ‘Stills’ project tasked composers at String and Tins with creating a piece of music in response to a self-selected work of art exhibited in London’s Tate Britain Gallery, presenting each of them with a premise; if each respective artwork represented a still from a scene, what would the score sound like?

Launched in 2021 with the release of the first instalment and concluded in 2023 with the third and final instalment, the ‘Stills’ series is now compiled in its entirety and released on limited edition gatefold vinyl with art by French artist Camille Rousseau and liner notes explaining the creative rationale behind each composition.

The vinyl edition is released alongside a digital compilation featuring a pulsating new remix of Simon Whiteside’s composition ‘Inversions’ by Joe Wilkinson.

Comprising eleven original scores amalgamating classical instrumentation - strings, woodwind, brass, piano - with contemporary electronic music and innovative sound design, ‘Stills’ represents a rich and moving anthology of evocative neo-classical composition, elevated by understated elements of drone and ambient, and influenced by the drama and enterprise of film soundtracks.

Across this collection, award-winning composers and sound designers interpret artworks by the likes of Edwardian artist John Singer Sargent, Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, surrealist war painter Paul Nash, British abstract artist Mary Martin, Hungarian-British artist Magda Cordell & more, crafting intimate new sound worlds for enduring visions of mystical classicism, lavish romanticism, melancholic Victorian landscapes, imposing modernist topographies and beyond.

Reflecting the range of these chosen artworks, the eclectic sound of ‘Stills’ displays diverse compositional approaches yet convenes around cohesively introspective moods and atmospheres, from the ambient haze of Will Cohen’s ‘Beyond Man’s Footsteps’, through the haunting, finely formed string cycles of Lawrence Kendrick’s ‘No. 12’, to the soothing Sakamoto-esque piano and Reichian cycles of Jim Stewart’s ‘The Soul of the Soulless City’.

Beyond Man's Footsteps, Briton Riviere (reproduced with permission from Tate Images)

Capturing an inventive convergence between art, sound, music, and inspiration, ‘Stills’ is a spellbinding listening experience, the product of a unique, adventurous project that reframes rarefied works of art and celebrates subjective modes of perception, drawing out symphonies from the canvas, finding expressive music in immutable imagery.

“One of the best internal projects we’ve ever done!” says Mike Bamford, founding partner at String and Tins.

The complete series of ‘Stills’ is out now digitally. The vinyl is out 26th January 2024.

Pre-order the vinyl on bandcamp