Robert
Stillman
Horses
(Mill Pond Records)
Horses is a collection of songs by
instrumentalist/ composer Robert Stillman. Stillman uses
an eclectic sonic palette consisting of saxophones, clarinets,
old pianos, pump organs, and drums to create short musical
narratives that exist on their own, but also work together
to create a vivid, self-contained world echoing the composer’s
interest in all things mysterious.
Though Horses is
Stillman’s debut recording
as a leader, he is no newcomer to the music world. His woodwind-arrangements
and piano playing can be heard on friend and label-mate Luke
Temple’s recent release, Hold A Match for a Gasoline
World. Robert also lends his drumming skills to the
New York rock foursome The End of The World and continues
to make his presence felt as a saxophonist on the improvised
music scene throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Stillman was born
and raised in Portland, Maine. His exposure to music came
early by way of his mother’s singing
and guitar playing and his father’s collection of Beatles
records. After a few years of requisite piano lessons, Stillman
took up saxophone at age eleven, and by his early teens he
was writing music and playing jazz gigs locally with musicians
thrice his age. After high school he relocated to Boston
to study music and literature in a dual-degree program at
New England Conservatory and Tufts University. While in Boston,
Stillman connected with a group of like-minded musicians
and formed the band Kalifactors, whose short but accelerated
career involved tours in Europe and the release of An
Introduction to Kalifactors on Fresh Sound Records.
In
2001 Stillman moved to New York, where he spent his early
months on endless walks, overwhelmed by the city’s
terrifying energy and ubiquitous detail. When he finally
settled, it was in his apartment with a four-track recorder,
composing and recording music. What emerged from these solitary
efforts was the demo-version of Horses –- a
collection of lo-fi, multi-tracked instrumental songs that
featured Stillman on all instruments, playing music that
sounded something like an antique film score for a long forgotten
silent movie. In December of 2004, Stillman and a group of
his closest friends from Maine and New York holed up in Seattle’s
Avast Recording Company with engineer Troy Tietjen (The Decemberists,
Death Cab for Cutie) to re-record the Horses repertoire
for Mill Pond Records, emerging a little over a week later
with the seven beautifully haunted-sounding tracks that comprise Horses. From
one listen it is clear Stillman took full advantage of the
recording studio’s resources to shape a production
that is at once delicate and urgent; the sounds on Horses seem
to live and breathe as distinct characters in a wordless
musical narrative. One would be hard pressed to pin the music
down in terms of genre; though the shrewd listener may be
able to pick out hints of Stillman’s variant musical
influences, (among whom he counts Kurt Weill, The Band, Milton
Nascimento, Miles Davis, and Maurice Ravel). It’s
clear the music on Horses exists on its own terms,
a detailed musical territory unto itself.
Though Horses is not set for release
until the beginning of 2006, Stillman and his band are currently
presenting the material live in select New York performances.
The shows use plenty of scrappy inventiveness to make the
music come alive: instrument switching and multi-tasking
are not uncommon on stage. The group plans to bring the Horses repertoire
on the road early next year in support of the record’s
release.
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