Words by Art Jefferson
Photography Steve Gullick
Leo Abrahams is the musician’s musician. The guitarist, pianist, producer, arranger and composer has not only worked with top tier acts in the music business, but has released cutting edge solo albums that are more like sonic paintings, creative and vivid.
Having played piano and guitar from the time of a youth, Abrahams was a member of various bands as a teenager, later attending London’s Royal Academy of Music. Initially concentrating on a career as a classical composer, he was presented with an opportunity to play with Imogen Heap, and from there it was off to the races.
Leo Abrahams’ credentials are lengthy, having produced for Underworld’s Karl Hyde, Wild Beasts, Paolo Nutini, Carl Barât, Oscar And The Wolf, Frightened Rabbit and more. He has played guitar on recordings for the likes of Florence and the Machine, Annie Lennox, Marianne Faithfull and Brian Eno, who he has continuously worked with over the years including the collaboration album Small Craft On A Milk Sea along with electronic mastermind Jon Hopkins.
In 2005 Leo Abrahams released his debut solo LP Honeytrap, masterfully crafting ambient soundscapes, which was critically praised in the media. His 2006 album Scene Memory was executed with a high level of sophistication, with each song emitting warmth and delicacy. In 2007 Abrahams released his third studio recording The Unrest Cure which featured Brian Eno, Ed Harcourt, KT Tunstall, Pati Yang, Phoebe Legere and more. Incorporating elements of rock and folk, the album well showcased his sheer versatility and was yet again applauded by various magazines throughout the UK and globally. 2009 saw the unveiling of The Grape and the Grain, which poised with absolute grace, found Abrahams incorporating the hurdy-gurdy, creating an overall radiant recording.
Back with a new record entitled Daylight, the LP features a track with long time friend Brian Eno, as well as drum contributions by Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa. Stirring a mixture of genres that are ultimately morphed into sounds that clearly defy one particular stamp of branding, Leo Abrahams is continuing to create beautifully produced music that is unquestionably timeless and nourishing for the ears and soul.
You’re beginnings with music literally started when you were a child. Although you were exposed to both guitar and piano, did playing in bands throughout your teenage years help to push you further into the direction of guitar or were you playing it just as equally as piano prior to that?
Leo Abrahams – When I was a teenager I thought I was going to be a classical composer. I felt guitar was something I was ok at but that it wasn’t a serious thing. It took comprehensive realisation of my limitations as a composer to see that, in fact, I had got good enough at guitar to contribute something worthwhile to other people’s music.
When did your love of classical music begin, because you were actually studying to become a classical composer?
Leo Abrahams – When I was 2 I used to demand that Grieg’s Pier Gynt Suite be played on heavy rotation on the family turntable.
During your studies at the Royal Academy of Music, were you writing more pop-inspired music as well? Also when did you decide that you were going to lean more in the direction of playing various styles of music other than classical?
Leo Abrahams – When I got to the Academy my style was heavily informed by my tutor, Steve Martland, and also Frank Zappa. It was not pop ‘inspired’, but it did contain non-traditional elements. I was also experimenting with aleatoric elements. The pieces were on the border of tonality and atonality. The only thing I was not at all interested in as a composer was serialism.
You have played with so many giants in music, but one artist that I’m curious about is Brian Eno. What was that experience like for you working with Eno on a number of projects and were there any particular techniques or lessons that you picked up from him in the studio?
Leo Abrahams – I’ve been asked this a lot. Brian has a way of making everyone involved in a potentially intimidating situation feel safe, and like they are there to discover things and have fun. He is an extremely genial, thoughtful, empathetic and trustworthy guide. All this is quite apart from his genius as a musician and writer. But in my work as a producer, I increasingly realise how much I try to help other people feel the way he made me feel when I was in his sessions.
Although your CV with working with various acts were surely extensive up until your 2005 debut LP ‘Honeytrap’, was there a sense of liberation when you began working on that recording, considering that this was totally your creative vision?
Leo Abrahams – Working on the ‘Code 46’ soundtrack with David Holmes gave me the confidence to try something of my own, having not written my own music for a few years. I didn’t feel liberated exactly, as I have always enjoyed collaboration and independence comes with its own set of responsibilities. But of course, it was nice to work on music that was a pure expression of whatever I was feeling or intending.
One album that really captures your brilliance as a producer, composer and musician is ‘The Grape & The Grain’. There was everything from various sounds of world music to folk. Can you talk about your personal inspirations when you were writing the notes on this album?
Leo Abrahams – Thanks! I don’t think I wrote any notes exactly – most of those compositions came about from just jamming late at night on an acoustic guitar, inspired by my girlfriend at the time who really opened me up to a lot of guitar music that I’d known nothing about before. It was a very natural writing process, I hardly even felt I was making a record. The most significant development in it was discovering and learning the hurdy-gurdy, which leant a distinctive flavour to the tunes.
With your latest LP ‘Daylight’, again you have managed to blur the lines of genre. Can you talk a bit about the new album, specifically with your vision of even challenging the boundaries of electronica?
Leo Abrahams – Again, it was really just a record that I made for myself. It certainly wasn’t my intention to challenge or blur anything. I think that when I make music, if I feel it’s too similar to anything I’ve heard before, or within a specific genre, I get scared that it’s not as good as something else in that genre and therefore don’t see the point of completing it. I can stand by that approach, but it also has meant that my music doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, even in these genre-bending times. I’m not sure what to make of it, but ‘Daylight’ is just a snapshot of where I was musically at that time. It feels like ‘me’, and I’m proud of the record.
You have played and performed with the best in music, worked on various soundtracks for film and released incredible solo material. If you could answer this, what would you say is your most proud accomplishment personally?
Leo Abrahams – There are times when you connect deeply with another musician or a listener. It’s not a proud moment, because to feel a sense of accomplishment necessitates a distance from the event itself. But it’s a lovely feeling of ‘rightness’. I also love making sounds when there is nobody listening, and I don’t think about what it’s all for.
When notions of quantifiable success come into it, I draw a complete blank. Any sense of achievement is balanced out by a perennial and deep sense of under-achievement. So I try not to think that way at all – and most musician friends of mine are the same! I’m glad I stuck to my guns at certain crucial points in my career, but (although it sounds really cheesy) it makes me feel humble rather than proud to have a life in music.
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