An eclectic and forward looking record label formed in 2006 and run out of Greenhouse Studios in ReykjavÃk, Iceland. Bedroom Community is a small, close knit core of friends and family operating between borders.
Read below for details on all 4 releases to date and look out for more exciting offerings coming in 2008. There is more info and music to be found on each "band members" ( Bedroom Community artists in this case) MySpace!
In our Friend Space below you'll see a number of people - familiar faces and others that might be less familiar - some of them are actual 'real life friends' but others suggest a musical reference, because music is a very personal thing that is hard to describe with words.
If you like what you hear send us a friend request or sign up to get our newsletter, if you are a band and want to become a friend just send us a message to add you, and we will.
You can visit us outside of MySpace, at our 'real' website Here , and read more about us in this ReykjavÃk Grapevine article Here ,
DEMO POLICY Here
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SAM AMIDON - ALL IS WELL
In just over a year, Icelandic imprint Bedroom Community, headed by Björk and Bonnie Prince Billy (amongst others) collaborator Valgeir Sigurðsson, have distilled some of the most interesting records around, first with Nico Muhly’s delicate Speaks Volumes, then with Ben Frost’s textural Theory Of Machines, and, more recently with Sigurðsson’s own stellar pop opus Ekvilibrium.
Joining them is folk singer Sam Amidon, a twenty-six year old musician from Brattleboro, Vermont, who currently lives in New York. He shares his time between his solo project and various bands, including Doveman, Stars Like Fleas and The Amidons, a band formed by his parents and dedicated to traditional dance and music forms. Earlier this year [2007], Sam returned with 'But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted', a collaboration with Thomas Bartlett, published on Plug Research, which focused on songs cherry-picked from the vast repertoire of traditional American folk music.
The same process informs 'All Is Well'. Ten songs, lifted from the Appalachian folklore and given a resolutely fresh sheen under the expert hand of Sigurðsson. Sam, who, besides vocal duties, also plays banjo, acoustic and electric guitar and fiddle on one track, is surrounded by brother Stefan (drums), Nico Muhly (piano and orchestral arrangements), Ben Frost (programming and bass), Aaron Siegel (percussive textures and glockenspiel), Eyvind Kang (viola), Morse (additional vocals), and Sigurðsson (bass, electronics, harmonium and percussion).
'All Is Well' is a rather beautiful collection of delicate traditional songs set against intricately woven backdrops. Things kick off pretty low key with Sugar Baby, on which acoustic and electric guitars provide the bulk of the accompaniment. Later, O Death appears to head in a similar direction at first, with the voice casting a shadow on a single melody played on the banjo, but the outlook becomes more inviting as elements are discretely added, while the delicate acoustic ornamentations of Fall On My Knees and Prodigal Son benefit from a more elaborate treatment, but retain the sparkle of their acoustic shell.
With 'All Is Well', Sam Amidon has crafted a precious gem of a record, all in nuances and shades, with delicate overtones and airy harmonies. Sigurðsson’s production is light and subtle yet it gives these songs fantastic depth and contrast without ever overshadowing Amidon’s delivery. The Bedroom Community family is growing, but the standards are as high as ever.
by Bruno Lasnier
THE MILK FACTORY
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photo by sigga sunna / edit by samantha west
VALGEIR SIGURÃSSON - EKVÃLIBRÃUM
Valgeir Sigurdsson first glimpsed the possibilities in being a music producer as a teenager in Iceland, when he connected the dots between beloved albums by Roxy Music, U2, David Bowie and more experimental records like Ambient 1; Music for Airports and Here Come the Warm Jets. He realizes that they all led back to one exceedingly brilliant, bald visionary named Brian Eno. "I really liked the way he worked with other bands" Sigurdsson says. "The way he incorporated his sound, but also took their sound further."
After cutting his teeth on four albums by Björk, Sigurdsson decided that it was time to strike out in new directions. Most recently, he has produced and engineered albums for Will Oldham, CocoRosie, classically trained composer Nico Muhly and avant-garde electronic musician Ben Frost, drawing the artists to his home studio in ReykjavÃk.
In July, Sigurdsson will also release his first album of solo material on Bedroom Community, his newly minted label. EkvÃlibrÃum is a synthesis of elements that have surfaced in Sigurdsson's other projects, but here they are given full stage. There are bouncy, flickering beats, the symphonic touches, the use of acoustic instruments in ambient soundscapes and the electronic washes. The album is also interspersed with vocal performances from past collaborators like Oldham, Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy and Machine Translations' J Walker, but in settings that are very much the producer's own.
And while Sigurdsson is known for making heavily textured electronic soundscapes and beats, it is the human performance he says, that resonates with him most deeply. The strength of EkvÃlibrÃum - as with all of Sigurdsson's projects - is in the organic way he weds the electronic to the human. If the artists that Sigurdsson works with have something in common, it's that they are not afraid of big emotions, and Sigurdsson uses his technical expertise to spotlight them. Nowhere is this clearer than on Oldham's recent album (released under his Bonnie 'Prince' Billy moniker), The Letting Go, where Sigurdsson's studio choices give expression to the full emotional possibilities of Oldham's songs. The interplay of electronic squalls with dramatic string arrangements, manipulated drum textures, plaintive harmonies and theatrical lyrics pushes Oldham's sound into spaces it had never previously been. The result is a singular album, as ornate as it is direct.
by Alex Waxman
THE FADER MAGAZINE
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photo by mina
BEN FROST - THEORY OF MACHINES
From the ominous darkness and intensity of its opening moments, one might expect a death metal album to break out in an instant, but Theory of Machines is an album whose design is as symphonic as it is confrontational—the tempo doesn't pick up, no hooks or vocals arrive, and when the drums finally kick in they're as fragmented and corroded as they could possibly be and still resemble a groove.In Theory of Machines, Ben Frost exploits every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre, the changes in this music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather—and sometimes as violent. As the music changes it changes only in texture, colour and intensity so that the sense is not of something being created, altered or even developed, but of something already present being slowly illuminated. ''
-Adapted from the liner notes by Daniel Johnson''
This is Frost’s first release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community Label. At 26 he has already released such critically-lauded works as 2003's guitar exploration LP, Steel Wound on the Room40 Label, which Pitchfork Media USA marked as ''"...An exemplary ambient experience"'', and the harrowing, self-titled 2005 opus School of Emotional Engineering, which Db Magazine called ''...An atmospheric masterpiece.''In addition to his solo work, Frost produces his work internationally in various forms including gallery-based installations, scores commissioned for film, dance and multimedia productions (for the likes of The Icelandic Dance Company and as part of A/V installation collective Cicada) and collaborative works, remixes and productions for artists such as Björk, Steintryggur, Neotropic, Lawrence English, Stars Like Fleas and Ai Yamamoto.A resident of Iceland, Ben Frost operates primarily in Greenhouse Studios in ReykjavÃk under the wing of producer and founder of the Bedroom Community's label/collective Valgeir Sigurðsson. Theory of Machines fully exploits the sonic resources of this unique environment with collaborators such as Valgeir and Sigtryggur Baldursson (The Sugarcubes).
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photo by dorothy hong
NICO MUHLY - SPEAKS VOLUMES
As classical composers, critics, musicians, orchestra directors and bloggers wonder what can be done to Save The Music and find new audiences, for those of us who probably are that indeterminate new audience, its mostly a question of vocabulary. Were simply looking for an entry point into the genre. Not a Beginners Guide or a list of major works we should download or Classical Music For Dummies, but the opposite: music that we share some words with.
Speaks Volumes, an album by New York-based composer Nico Muhly, might be the answer. Muhly worked with Björk on Medulla and Drawing Restraint 9, he holds down a day job at Phillip Glasss studio, and I once saw him accompany Antony for a version of Hope Theres Someone and Lou Reed for a version of Perfect Day in the same night. The American Symphony Orchestra premiered his orchestral work Fits & Bursts at Avery Fisher Hall when he was 22, and meanwhile, critic-with-a-blog Alex Ross posted an email from Muhly that explained exactly what the Neptunes did with that ultra-satisfying triangle ding in Keliss Milkshake. Muhlys compositions have titles that sound like stolen snatches of conversation among friends (It Goes Without Saying, You Could Have Asked Me) and if you ask him, hell tell you why he listened to a shit-ton of Destinys Child when he wrote music to accompany an edition of the grammar-hound handbook Elements Of Style. In other words, the flurry of conversation that bounces around Muhlys work feels like something we can take part in.
Pillaging Music from Speaks Volumes is an extreme and exuberant example of Muhlys trademark playful, hyperactive mode. At first it alternates between glittering corals of arpeggios and plonky, sputtering chunks of melody; by the end hes chopped the melodies into randy statements that roughhouse with slap-happy percussion. Muhly is in a very different mode, however, on album-closer Keep In Touch, in which a terribly isolated and hurt viola finds a similarly damaged duet partner in a manipulated recording of Antony cooing and hiccupping, wordlessly emoting over a palette of subtle organs and snap-clomp programming. Muhlys range is expansivethe relationship between the emotional seriousness of his music and its boundless sense of humor is complex and rewarding.
During one conversation with the composer, I asked if he had anticipated the success Antony had in 2005, and Muhly said, Well I would listen to his music and it was like, How could people not love this? I replied that lots of great music never really finds its audience, but as soon as I said it, it sounded like something to say, not anything to believe. They were wasted words, something Muhlys music has no patience for.
by Will Welch
THE FADER MAGAZINE
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