Ever since 2014’s
Music for the Uninvited, Leon Vynehall has built a reputation for crafting rich, orchestral leftfield house. His music has always had a refined approach the lavish strings, low-slung percussion, and delicate vocal cuts call to mind early 2000s Metro Area recordings. At its best, on songs like “Midnight on Rainbow Road”, Vynehall’s music seems to glide rather than dance, a blur of understated drums, echoing synths, and summery blue chords. It’s pure finesse and in the best possible sense.
Vynehall is coming off arguably his most refined work yet, 2018’s
Nothing Is Still, a moving, symphonic ode to his grandparents’ emigration to the United States. Now, three years later, the Los Angeles-based producer has switched gears and released something looser, heavier, and baggier.
On his celebrated 2018 release,
Nothing Is Still, British producer Leon Vynehall invited the listener into a world gone by. Capturing the experience of his grandparents as they tried to build a new life for themselves in America, it was a singular masterwork. A grand concept in theory but one full of nuance and subtlety. Technically astounding, Vyenhall wove together a rich tapestry of complementary sounds from smooth jazz to echoing chamber music, from dub wubs to narcoleptic ambient synths – all while satisfying a very personal purpose.
New album
Rare, Forever finds Vynehall addressing the here and now. It’s Vynehall trying to orientate himself both artistically and personally and discovering a world of possibilities. That leads to a fragmented, complicated, unfixed place that takes the more conventional aspects of dance music and the wildly avant-garde and encourages them to lock lips in a euphoric embrace.
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Leon Vynehall loves a good story. Back in 2014, the UK artistâs breakthrough mini-LP,
Music for the Uninvited, was rooted in childhood memories of the mixtapes his mother used to play in the car, while 2016âs
Rojus drew parallels between a night of partying and the mating rituals of tropical birds. Two years later, he went fully conceptual with
Nothing Is Still, a beautiful album that folded in elements of ambient and classical while recounting the tale of his grandparentsâ emigration to New York in the 1960s. The self-described âmultimedia experienceâ also included a series of short films and a novella.
All I want to do is devour music.
“I value my solitude, especially when writing music, the process is a vulnerable thing for me”, says
Leon Vynehall from his Tottenham studio. Characterised by the British producer as “sauna-like”, he swivels around the room in his office chair to show it off, revealing keyboards and synths stacked up against the wall, a suit jacket hung up casually on the wall and a bookcase filled with resources of any kind. He’s operated there since last October after moving from Shoreditch, and it seems to have turned from a studio into an obsessive workspace and part living space. It was the room that saw him finish up his second full-length album, Rare, Forever , which sees the light of day soon on Ninja Tune.