RemainS LP
Remains is the debut album of London-based composer & sound artist Will Gardner. Written during lockdown, the album explores Will’s memories caring for his dad through the final stages of Parkinson’s dementia.
The album is both an aural imagining of the dementia experience (it’s memory slippages, disturbances, delusions and paranoias) and also a deeply personal account of grieving for a parent, and what it means to grieve for someone who is still alive.
The composition process started after Will began reading from his Dad’s personal diaries which stretched back over twenty years. The exploration of memory through music is a constant thread throughout the album.
Will began to compose themes using extracts from his dad’s diaries. Fragments of the text were used to derive the rhythms and melodies on which the tracks are built. Through this process, a sort of translation occurred: the immediate meaning became lost, but an imprint of it remained within the music.
The old family piano keeps returning as a presence throughout Remains - alongside strings, voices and other indiscernible textures, often altered and disfigured through digital effect chains. Ideas repeat themselves. Moments of clarity fall away into fog; sounds glitch in and out of focus and are distorted almost beyond recognition. Signals of separate audio chains influence each other, morphing together in an uncanny conversation - mirroring the deterioration and disorientation brought on by the disease.
In spite of this however, there is a softness that underpins these nightmares. “Whilst trying to capture this dark and incoherent internal world that my Dad was experiencing, I noticed that I kept returning, somewhat counter-intuivately, to quite delicate, soft sounds. I realised that these sounds were like seeing my own reflection emerge within the work - my own sense of concern for what he was going through and my own grief for what was being lost day by day."
"Remains" deals with a raw, complex subject from multiple angles, slipping back and forth between Will’s own perspective and the imagined perspective of his father.
About the Artist
Will is a composer and artist based in London. His music combines processed, improvised piano; vocals and other instrumentation to create digitally transfigured contemporary classical soundscapes that explore the spaces between the abstract and the figurative.
Will grew up in the Fens, East Anglia and his early life was steeped in classical music. His earliest musical experiences were singing as a chorister in the ancient stone surroundings of Ely Cathedral. He went on to study classical music at Cambridge University, as a choral scholar; and he earned a diploma in piano performance from the Royal Schools of Music.
On graduating, Will decided to move to Berlin and found a job working for American composer Jonathan Bepler. The job led him to New York, to assist Jonathan on Matthew Barney’s five-hour experimental operatic film River of Fundament. Made over the course of seven years, the film starred an extraordinary variety of musicians from different genres including Milford Graves, Debbie Harry, Joan La Barbara and Shara Nova. This hyper-eclectic approach to composition had a profound and formative affect on Will’s own music.
Will moved to London in 2016 and moved between different roles as arranger, conductor and pianist - collaborating with bands, artists and composers.
Over the last couple of years he has orchestrated the score for Georgina Oakley’s BAFTA-winning film Blue Jean, written music for Låpsley’s Through Water European tour, and conducted string arrangements on alt-J’s fourth album The Dream.
It was during the global pandemic of 2020 that Will began to emerge as an artist in his own right, and his debut album Remains is released on Castles in Space this Autumn.
Will’s experience across a wide range of musical genres and practices has played a significant role informing Will’s music today. He is equally comfortable in both the studio and the concert hall, and relishes using a variety of creative techniques from both classical and electronic music traditions.