Some listeners may remember Entanglement, Michael Price‘s 2015 debut album on Erased Tapes Records. Price has been busy since then writing music for piano, orchestra, and soundtrack, much of which is sure to fall in the sweet spot for readers of this site. His 2021 collection, The Hope of Better Weather, featured reworkings from Bill Ryder-Jones, Yann Tiersen, Eluvium and other great artists. Earlier this year, Price released Whitsun, “a profound exploration of the connection between sound and memory.” Whitsun is a deeply personal record, dedicated to the memory of Price’s grandfather, as well as his father, who sadly passed during the recording of the album. Accompanying this release, Price has put together Sundays & Raindays, a fabulous mix of deep ambient textures and nostalgic moods.
MINI-INTERVIEW
Please introduce yourself.
I’m Michael Price, a composer born in Yorkshire, and have spent the last 25 years combining working in film & TV music with my own recordings and shows as an artist.
Tell us about the new album.
Whitsun is my most personal album to date. It’s a series of interconnected pieces, played on my single-stringed Una Corda piano, accompanied by transformations of my singing or trumpet playing, both of which were a huge part of my childhood.
Tell us about the mix.
There’s a deep river of ambient music that I think runs from our earliest experiences listening to natural sounds. I love how many strange and wonderful ways artists have turned this impulse into music.
The pandemic has obviously upended live music as we know it, so I think it’s more important than ever to ask about the broader community: are there any local artists, labels, venues etc you want to shout out?
When we moved our family out of London to Hertfordshire last year, one of the things that we wanted to do was to be involved in our new community. For us, our new musical world ranges from supporting our local primary school which need all the help they can get to nurture music-making, to the amazing new classical scene exemplified by Clare O’Connell’s concert series Behind the Mirror.
Anything else coming up on the horizon you want to plug, gigs or what not?
There’s a new series of Unforgotten for ITV that we’re recording at the moment, due to be broadcast in the New Year, and after that I’m looking forward to taking a few walks in the woods.
TRACKLIST
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a closer listen 