• One of the best and emotionally evocative recordings of new chamber music in recent memory. Perhaps the most deeply felt is the other-world beauty of Colin Riley’s Passing Places, an 11-minute work scored for mezzo, clarinet, and electronically generated sounds. This is a stunning listening experience.
    Journal of the American Clarinet Society (Dec 2011) / Moments And Days

Guardian

  • Colin Riley has a restless spirit. Though routinely identified as a classical composer, his activities in the past few years have resisted categorisation: he founded the Homemade Orchestra with jazz saxophonist Tim Whitehead and has helped put together iF, the adventurous Isleworth festival. MooV, which he formed with Norwegian singer Elisabeth Nygård, foregrounds Riley's compositions, yet it is closer to the fractured soundworld of Scandinavian artists such as Efterklang, or Susanna and the Magical Orchestra. While tracks such as Pure and Coil are austere and somewhat alienating in the correct, northern European manner, Beautiful Wounds and Fall Away are poised and engaging. The album is structured in such a way that it improves on repeated listening, and Nygård's voice meshes beautifully with Riley's spare orchestrations, wrought from keyboards, bass, electronics, cello (Zoe Martlew) and percussion (Rob Millett).
    John L Walters / Fold

Boomkat

  • MooV is a meeting between electronic composer Colin Riley and Norwegian vocalist Elizabeth Nygard. The range of sounds tends to lean in the direction of abstraction, dabbling in waifish, melodic drones and obscure jazzy exchanges. While Riley's music remains rooted in real-world instrumentation (cello, bass guitar, percussion and keyboards) it tends to be so far removed from its source that its derivation hardly matters. The album opens with the lovely, 12k-ish 'Pure', setting quiet, bell-like tones against Nygard's mesmeric vocal, and even during its loudest moments (as on the jazzy, marimba-styled 'Interference') the album remains complex and mysterious. Nygard sounds rather like her compatriot Maja Ratkje on 'Coil', squeaking and muttering in conjunction with a bed of granulated digital sound and manipulated cello noise, while the chiming clock resonances of 'na sov (now sleep)' are altogether more gentle and effortlessly lovely. Finally, 'End With Mourning' ceases to be so tonally detached, its urgent stutters and minor key strings ushering a dramatic, glitch-laden close to the record. Recommended.
    Boomkat / Fold

Evening Standard

  • This month composer Colin Riley launches a label, Squeaky Kate Music, with three discs of mostly his own music. The plop of raindrops, the rustle of leaves, the unfolding of a flower; Riley has the ability to evoke nature with the simplest of means, a plucked harp or a flutter of strings. The central tracks are exquisite settings of a sequence of verses, sung by Alison Wells, with ensemble conducted by Mark Forkgen. The other two discs, jazzy and choral, are equally impressive.
    Barry Millington / A Green and Yellow Melancholy

All About Jazz

  • For his final release of "new" music, percussionist Bill Bruford collaborates with Pianocircus—an all-keyboard ensemble best-known for its unique coverage of largely contemporary classical music, fitting somewhere between Steve Reich and Phillip Glass' systems music and the avante leanings of Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür and David Lang. With four of Pianocircus' six members alongside Bruford and bass guitarist Julian Crampton, Skin and Wire features music by Colin Riley, who occupies similar territory, but adds elements of electronics and ambient music to the mix. With plenty to appeal to fans of Swiss pianist Nik Bartsch and albums like Stoa (ECM, 2006), there's also much to differentiate Riley's writing. Riley's music is about more than a hypnotic pulse, complex polyrhythms and the mathematical interlocking of multiple musical parts. "Kit and Caboodle," the only collaborative composition—with Bruford, not surprisingly, given its visceral pulse—possesses clear great forward motion. Still, it's an episodic piece with a hint of Norwegian keyboardist/composer Jon Balke's idiosyncrasies, a gentle interlude of electric keyboards approaching the trance-inducing stasis of Brian Eno's Music for Airports (Virgin/Astralwerks, 1978), and tempo shifts that lend it its own distinct complexion. "Pale Corridor" is softer but no less hypnotic, as otherworldly electronics combine with reverb-drenched piano and a shifting pulse from Bruford that juxtaposes soft textures and a subdued backbeat, even as the dynamics gradually intensify to a climax that then dissolves into sparer, ethereal atmospherics. Bruford—spending the latter part of his career in jazz, but earlier years with King Crimson giving him plenty of opportunity to hone his skills as a colorist—is the ideal choice for Riley. Defined, in his earliest days with Yes and Crimson, by his mathematical precision, Bruford's later jazz proclivities result in a looser feel that's equally vital to Riley's imaginative, stylistically unfettered writing. On the darker, "The Still Small Voice," oddly constructed rhythms hide in the weeds, emerging only occasionally, while Bruford's expanded, percussion-heavy kit provides expansive color to Riley's hauntingly beautiful score for keyboards and piano—a combination of queued themes and quirky sonics. Keyboardists David Appleton, Adam Caird, Kate Halsall and Semra Krutac possess a wide range of experience, transcending the contemporary classical realm in which they largely live. Hints of Gamelan introduce the album closer, "Ebb Cast"; electric keyboards create a soft landscape over which occasionally sharp bursts of piano punctuate with minimalist patterns that ebb, flow and ultimately disappear. Much of Skin and Wire possesses hooks on which a hat can be hung; still, for the most part, this is music to be felt and experienced as much as it is to be heard. Progressive, but in a completely different sense than the groups with whom Bruford cut his teeth, Skin and Wire is a sadly final demonstration of the recently retired drummer's intrepid interest in all things musical. Still, with Skin and Wire's unequivocal beauty and genre-busting writing, here's hoping he can be coerced back into the studio on occasion for more creative projects like Skin and Wire.
    John Kelman / Skin And Wire

The Times

  • So what is this? Classical jungle music, avant-garde hip-hop or merely a drummer having a good time? These nine pieces are the work of Colin Riley, a composer whose work often sits between classical, jazz and pop. Here the minimalist music of the pianos is complemented by Bill Bruford’s restless, intricate rhythms. The effect is absorbing and gently hypnotic; a sort of Aphex Twin with A levels. The avant garde shows its happy face.
    John Bungey / Skin And Wire

various

  • Colin Riley has for some years been a composer who seems to be able to create moments of magic, and his ‘A Stranger Called This Morning’ absolutely sticks out as one of those half hours that whistled by in a completely enchanting and memorable way. Beautiful, clever and direct. Stewart Collins, Classical Music Magazine, Dec 2003 A nicely judged blend of innocence and finesse. Daily Telegraph, 2003
    various / A Stranger Called This Morning
  • … treasure troves of harmonic and rhythmical possibilities … moon-bright clarity … an intricate web of ‘cello, vibraphone and trip-hop inflected drum machine … intimations of chaos … mischievously dissonant attack … intriguing sound collisions …a fearless lucky dip of a concert. The Guardian, April 2004 Modern pop is now a legitimate source for jazz. The trend reaches a peak with the album Inside Covers by the Homemade Orchestra. The devilishly inventive arrangements bring unsuspecting depths to familiar songs. This attempt to expand the range of jazz is an unreservedly good thing. The Metro, April 2004 Deftly interweaving scored and improvised music, Inside Covers is an affectionate and at times overtly tongue in cheek homage to popular song in the twentieth century. Mining a characteristically British seam of surrealist humour, it prompted me to ask when the last time a CD had made me laugh out loud. Jazzwise April 2004 The textural inventions are fascinating – classical singing and quietly swaying string parts, humming drones and chiming vibes. A brave enterprise. The Guardian, March 2004 An audacious venture … tantalising new territory … Times April 2004
    various / Inside Covers
  • Some of the most beautiful music you will hear this year … lithe and buoyant …. has the hairs rising on the back of your neck. Peter Bacon, Birmingham Post Here are wondrous ideas, perfectly executed and with exquisite sound. Garry Booth, BBC Music Magazine Intensely sad, celebratory, ruminative. Thoughtful and impressionistic contemporary music that rewards repeated listenings. Andrew Vine, Yorkshire Post A dark, cinematic, gorgeous thing filled with strange grooves. Time Out Jazz and classical music should go together more often if the new album 'Tides' is anything to go by. Intelligent, confident, accessible … a labour of love rather than a product. John L Walters, The Guardian A very English, very appealing fusion. John Bungey, The Times Unusually colourful and seductive depths … created by Riley's restless sense of personal odyssey. Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise Magazine A very special event. The Guardian An extremely intelligent and enjoyable experimental fusion, similar to a spider-web in all its extreme complexity, beautiful to watch, and absolutely unpredictable. Lara Bellini, Musica Jazz Magazine More gigs like these please. John L Walter, The Guardian
    various / Tides

classicalsource

  • There are many intelligent musicians whose work defies casual categorization … the composer Colin Riley is one such musician, Riley’s “When Soft Voices Die” made excellent use of the rich mahogany sound of Whitehead and Baptiste with Zoë Martlew’s cello … “Oil on Water” producing a welcome grittiness as stark electric textures rubbed against mournful canons. Riley’s “Blue Space” situated the tenor saxophones in a beguiling soundscape that combined electronic tintinnabulation with live percussion; his spare arrangement of Peter Gabriel’s “Here Comes the Flood”, with vocals from the glamorous Kathleen Willison, held the audience rapt.
    classicalsource / Homemade Orchestra live

Jazzwise

  • Close’ covers some tantalisingly different ground, with marimba, electric guitar, ‘cello and violin combining to create a kind of brooding post-rock atmosphere. Colin Riley is a restless, questing composer operating in the margins where classical form clashes with improvisation, pop and electronica.
    Daniel Spicer / Close
  • The annual iF Festival, of which contemporary composer Colin Riley is co-artistic director, is a series of gigs and events that sets out to explore the range of creative possibilities open to contemporary musicians and performance artists. This year it programmed some ten events in March to mark the festival’s tenth anniversary. You may recall Riley from his impressionistic classical/jazz hybrid Homemade Orchestra that recorded a rather lovely CD co-led by saxophonist Tim Whitehead on Basho in 2004. Riley’s newest band Moov, who performed one of the last gigs of the festival here tonight, also tests the boundaries between different genres, and between improvisation and composition, but there are no jazz solos - or anything that could be easily labelled jazz. Yet, performing in one of the last gigs of the festival, the members of Moov respond to and interact with each other in a way that has much in common with collective improvisation. Moov consists of an ensemble of genre-phobic artists who between them usually orbit the worlds of computer-based music, contemporary classical, jazz and film: they are electric bassist Pete Wilson, cellist Zoe Martlew, digital/electronics programmer Ben Jarlett, percussionist/vibraphonist Rob Millett, singer Olivia Chaney, Riley on keyboards and video projectionist Howie Bailey. Riley likes to compose phrases or sequences in his music that rise and fall like waves and then reach a momentary silence. Young hippy-chick singer Olivia Chaney - someone who has worked on the fringes of London’s F-IRE collective - joins the band for a large part of the two sets. Alongside Riley’s ambiguous ghostly synth patches, Millet’s minimal bell-like vibes and percussion, and Aphex Twin-influenced Jarlett’s well-placed subtle electronica the result often recalls the work of singer/songwriter David Sylvian and to a lesser extent Robert Wyatt. Chaney’s excellent, unpredictable vocal lies somewhere between Sandy Denny and Norma Winstone, and she improvises incredibly effectively considering the music’s ambiguous harmonies and shifting textures. Brian Eno has spoken of his approach as being like painting in sound and this will be something Riley will have much empathy with. So it was no accident that Howie Bailey’s watery projected images, which can on other occasions seem an unnecessary diversion, tonight dovetailed naturally with Moov’s music. Although Riley usually operates in the classical oeuvre, Moov comes closer to a kind of post-rock/electronica songs-based music. If the album release on Riley’s label, scheduled for release later this year is anything like tonight’s performance we’re in for a real treat.
    Selwyn Harris / MooV live
  • English new music composer Colin Riley first came to the attention of the jazz scene with Homemade Orchestra, a joint collaboration between him and ex-Loose Tubes soulful saxophonist Tim Whitehead. They released their debut CD Tides on the Basho label in 2003 and gave so-called music of the third stream a new lease of life. But with his newest band MooV Riley has discovered a kind of jazz he is more at home with. The debut fold sees Riley forming an alliance with Leeds-based Norwegian jazz singer-songwriter Elisabeth Nygård, a member of city’s experimental collective LIMA. Songs are composed by Riley with sparse arrangements for keyboards, cello, bass and percussion and infiltrated with the kind of electronica that’s more textural than groove-based. Some may consider this type of contemporary Norwegian vocal jazz as not really jazz singing at all. Are they right? Put it this way: Nygård demonstrates more of the spirit and improvised nature of jazz than your average standards singer. Inevitably echoes of the highly-influential Sidsel Endressen come to the fore in Nygård’s rasping blues folksong inflections as well as the throat-clicks and twitters of abstract improv phonetics. But Nygård doesn’t entirely conform to any lazy Nordic stereotype. Behind her icy-breath intimacy is real warmth and passion. With Riley’s preference for percussive spooky keyboard and marimba, the songs are occasionally reminiscent of David Sylvian while Nygård also comes across with the left-field pop sensibility of artists like Beady Belle or Bjork. At other times she can blur the lines between the voice as lead and as an instrument adding to a collective sound. Fold takes some time to unravel but is worth all the effort.
    Selwyn HArris / Fold
  • Bruford claims this is a swansong of ‘fresh’ (as he describes it) music. If so, he’s going out at the top of his game with as witty and vigorous a recording as he’s made in a while. Always a serial collaborator, Bruford relishes his percussive contribution to the Circus’ interpretations of Colin Riley’s energetic and at times downright cheeky music. Released from a full-on drumming role (with four pianos there’s always plenty of percussive power) Bruford revels in colours and highlights, be they Indonesian splashes on ‘The Still Small Voice’, or the simple scrapes cymbal of ‘Without A Hand To Hold’ which from the most unpropitious start, a lonesome rhythmic squawl, a dangled piano chord, builds to a misty whimsy. Riley’s own programming even brings back memories of Bruford’s love/hate affair with electric drums: the ‘treated’ drums on the shifting moods of ‘Squiggle Zipper’ are especially effective. Bruford even gets a co-writing credit on the surprisingly funky ‘Kit And Caboodle’. Riley may have a fiercely ‘modernist’ reputation, but such is the Circus’ energy and range of dynamics and Bruford’s own taste and discipline, this is music that is as accessible as it is intellectual, as felt as it is thought. More please Mr Bruford, or is that really asking too much?
    Andy Robson / Skin And Wire

Progressive Ears (online)

  • 'Any reasonable player would refer you to his most recent efforts, because we live in the hope that things get better. If I were still recording and performing, I'd do more things like Colin Riley's Skin and Wire.'
    Bill Bruford / Skin And Wire