ADRIAN UTLEY

Adrian Utley, one of the musical mavericks behind trip hop giants Portishead, resurfaces today with one of the most audacious projects of his entire career – to reimagine the music of Polish pianist Frèdèric Chopin… without the piano!

“Adrian and Portishead are among my favourite musicians,” enthuses Mariusz. “The sound, the approach to making music, the search for unobvious and lo-fi textures, all of it had an enormous influence on me. His guitar playing is also very close to my own aesthetic. I later discovered that, like Fennesz [another of the album’s guests], he had worked with Mark Linkous in Sparklehorse, one of the bands I have loved most.”

Utley’s career reaches back to stints with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Big John Patton during the 1980s. He co-founded Portishead in 1991, since when he has worked with Marianne Faithfull, Jeff Beck, Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) and many others… including his own Adrian Utley’s Guitar Orchestra.

His film work includes collaborations with Nic Roeg, David Attenborough, Britain’s National Trust and more. Mariusz Szypura’s Chopin Residue, however, offered him – and a clutch of fellow conspirators – a challenge unlike any other.

With its UK premiere set for London’s prestigious Cadogan Hall on September 26, as part of the Polish Jazz Festival, Chopin Residue is on course to become one of the most talked about classical releases of the year.

It is certainly among the most ambitious, as the Polish artist and performer takes nine of his countryman’s best-loved pieces of piano music – and then removes the piano!

The website culture.pl explained “What began as a random observation while working in the studio ended in a monumental, multifaceted undertaking… Mariusz Szypura reaches for the Polish composer’s works to strip them of the pop culture clichés that have accumulated over decades.”

Mariusz himself elaborates, “I rejected the piano immediately. If you’re not a virtuoso, in a country where we have a cult of Chopin’s music, the Chopin Competition, where we can hear the best of the best interpreters of his music live, it would be a mission doomed to failure.

“Anything less than exceptional craftsmanship, in my opinion, sounded like folk music or, at best, a jingle played on PKP Intercity. I decided Chopin didn’t deserve such profanation. I could only approach this material through the prism of my own sensitivity, harmony, and deconstruction.

“So I took the piano out. Not as a provocation, more as a question: if you remove the instrument everyone identifies with this music, what’s actually left? Turns out quite a lot. The harmonic structure is still there, the phrasing, the strange melancholy in the intervals. That’s the residue. The piano was the delivery system, not the content.”

But that’s not all he did! Released today as the latest single from the 2 CD album, “Étude Op. 25 No. 12” takes Szypura’s already-remarkable reimagining of this 189-year-old formal piano study, and delivers it up to Portishead’s Adrian Utley for a thoroughly invigorating remix and make-over.

Mariusz explains, “‘Étude Op. 25 No. 12’ is Adrian’s reconstruction, not my piece with his guitar on top. That is the principle of the whole second disc: nine artists, nine rebuilds, each in their own language.”

SINGLE: https://orcd.co/mariuszszypura_adrianutley

With the album’s extraordinary packaging having already received a Bronze A’ Design Award and a Red Dot Award, Chopin Residue is split into two parts, the original “Deconstructions” across one half of the CD and double album packages, and specially commissioned reworkings across the other, with Mariusz continuing, “Practically, it meant giving the material to guitars, drums, theremin, ondes Martenot, electronics, breath.”

To this end, Mariusz invited contributions from Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), David Pajo (Slint), Joey Waronker (Atoms For Peace, Beck), Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie), John McEntire (Tortoise), John Stanier (Battles) and Jim O’Rourke, before passing the tapes over to a host of fellow visionaries – Utley is joined by Fennesz, Christine Ott, Matthew Herbert, Masayoshi Fujita, Sean O’Hagan, Jim O’Rourke, Benoit Pioulard and Abul Mogard.

“I briefed [the artists] on the concept, sent the deconstructions and let them do what they do.” And they did it.”

Even more remarkably, Mariusz intends both discs to be played at once! “They were built to overlap,” he says, while the Blu-ray release goes even further, serving up an utterly captivating immersive version. “This was the real payoff. In stereo you hear an arrangement. In Atmos you’re inside the harmonic space with the piano missing from the middle of it. The absence becomes physical. That’s not a format upgrade, it’s closer to what the piece was always trying to do.”

Chopin Residue will be released on CD and vinyl on October 16. The Blu-ray version is already available.

CD/VINYL: https://cleorecs.com/search?q=chopin+residue&options
DIGITAL: https://orcd.co/prjp8v9
BLU-RAY: https://cleorecs.com/search?q=chopin+residue

Track listing

CD DISC ONE/VINYL SIDES ONE AND TWO

Prelude Op. 28 No. 22 – Lee Ranaldo, Zoh Amba
Étude Op. 25 No. 12 – Lee Ranaldo, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Charlie Draper, Milosz Pękala
Berceuse Op. 57 – Milosz Pękala, John McEntire, Blanket Swimming, Jacek Gawlowski
Prelude Op. 28 No. 20 – Charlie Draper
Prelude Op. 28 No. 4 – Joey Waronker, Adrian Utley, Carolina Eyck
Prelude Op. 28 No. 2 – Charlie Draper, John Stanier, Sugar Yoshinaga
Nocturne Op. 72 No. 1 – Milosz Pękala, John McEntire, Adrian Utley, Gail Ann Dorsey, Nailah Hunter, Peter Pichler
Prelude Op. 28 No. 9 – Zoh Amba, Milosz Pękala, Nailah Hunter, David Pajo
Prelude Op. 28 No. 15 – Lee Ranaldo, Milosz Pękala, John Stanier

CD DISC TWO / VINYL SIDES THREE AND FOUR