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Artist News Releases
The Staves and yMusic announce collaborative album
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 6 November 2017
The Staves have announced a new album, ‘The Way Is Read’, created in collaboration with chamber pop group yMusic.
Emily Staveley-Taylor says of the project: “Our aim from the outset was to truly collaborate with yMusic. We wanted to feel like instruments and join in with some of yMusic’s existing work, using our voices in ways we hadn’t previously explored”.
She goes on: “We chopped up compositions and put them together again in new ways. We took old folk songs and made them abstract. The idea of forming an orchestra with these incredible musicians was fascinating. What we have ended up with is everything we’d hoped, more than we dreamed, and hopefully the tip of the iceberg”.
Referencing the role of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon – who has previously worked with both outfits – in orchestrating this collaboration, Rob Moose of yMusic adds: “When Justin raised the possibility of our groups collaborating, we immediately upped the stakes by focusing on a combination of new Staves songs and transformations of yMusic’s composed works”.
He adds: “It was as much a thrill to hear songs emerge organically over sections of intricate chamber music as it was satisfying to strip songs of the instrument that created them, whether guitar or piano, in order to craft new connective tissue. This project was born of voice memos sent back and forth across the seas, two frenetic days in a Manhattan rehearsal space, a festival set, and a single day of recording in the woods outside of Eau Claire”.
The album will be released on 24 Nov. Listen to album track ‘Trouble On My Mind’ here:
