Mike Andrews, Hand On String press release
While you're sure to have heard his music, you probably don't know his name. Mike Andrews is not a star. He is a dedicated, prolific and multifaceted artist, songwriter, composer, pianist, and ukulele player. Mike has finally overcome shyness and set aside his productions and collaborations to write the music for himself - a musical reflection of his own life and love story.
Those who have heard of him associate Mike Andrews' name with the score music of Donnie Darko, celebrated TV show Freaks & Geeks and Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know. He's also credited as a producer, songwriter or composer on more than 20 albums, including those for Inara George, Brendan Benson, Gary Jules, DJ Greyboy and Metric.
The forthcoming full-length Hand on String will be released on his own newly-established label, Elgin Park Recordings, in Summer 2006. It's deep. It's dark. (As in Nick Drake-dark). And it's been a long time since you've heard anyone this passionate about mellow. His goal was to create a musical and magical sense of transcendent calm, a respite from the hustle and glow of Los Angeles' hyperactive mediascape. He made it at his Glendale, California, home, all alone (well, almost... LA chanteuse Inara George and pianist Greg Kurstin both contribute breathtaking guest performances). Naturally, the album expresses Mike's singular sense of intimacy and tenderness.
Take the second track, Tracings. Distant vocal harmonies float like vapor, echoing the British folk-psychedelia of troubadour John Martyn. His production of Margo Mitchell's Just a Thought channels McCartney's Ram, all filtered harpsichords and mischievous synths. On the touching See Me Plain, birdsong and Casio flutter above Mike's acoustic latticework. And Orange Meet Lemon casts shadows of Robert Wyatt's hazy, yet nimble, cosmic folk-jazz. Lyrical shades of another LA dawn gone to waste; ruminations on discovery and perception, wakefulness and disease. And Kurstin's elegant piano arrangement is guaranteed to turn heads.
Like everything Mike Andrews becomes involved with, Hand on String is not your average product. It comes packaged with a full-size, 20-page book of watercolor illustrations by friend and renowned graphic artist Geoff McFetridge, perhaps best known for designing the opening credits to Adapatation and The Virgin Suicides. The book is inspired by the album and its beauty is on parallel.
The collection of twelve songs is delivered with honesty, intimacy and soulful grace, capturing the mysticism of falling in love, loneliness of heartbreak and every emotion that runs deeply in between.
