A Really Good Spot
July 8, 2022
First Terrace Records & Beacon Sound are proud to co-release the beautiful sophomore album from Montreal cellist & composer Justin Wright. The record is a wildly creative montage of string improvisations, cassette loops, field recordings and, at certain pivotal moments throughout, poetry & voice.
While the cello remains a central engine behind many of the tracks, A Really Good Spot is a drastic departure from Justin’s previous records of acoustic string drones. Throughout, Justin displays an evolved compositional sensibility which intimately and honestly embraces the beautiful spontaneous moments, tribulations, and studio edits that would conventionally be removed from a polished production, and brings them to the foreground.
In Justin’s own words - “When I first started writing tracks for A Really Good Spot, I didn’t have much in mind other than wanting cello, wanting synthesizers, and feeling like I was long overdue for writing new material. But once I got started, I was having so much fun coming up with new methods for writing that I wondered: what if “procedurality” could appear on a spectrum, just like dynamics or tempo? Why is process something we try to cover up? There is something that feels so dishonest about a pristine, polished album that fits together a little too perfectly, as if all the tribulations leading up to it are swept aside in the name of presentability. Of course, time is an enemy of simplicity, and what began as an attempt to bring process to the foreground turned into what the album is today: a surrealist spectrum of methodology, where the techniques showcased may or may not be real, where the orchestration confidently reinforces the most haphazard nonsense elements, and where the playfulness occasionally steps aside for moments of somber clarity.”
Music for Staying Warm
April 5, 2019
"Music For Staying Warm began when I was tasked with writing and performing a set of string works for a relaxation room at a chaotic all-night event in the heart of Montreal winter. It was a cold winter, and for me, a cold year, and when a cat curled up at my feet in the middle of performing these works, I felt like I was doing something right. After gradually developing these ideas many months after the first performances, I recorded most of this album during a residency at the Banff centre for the Arts, coinciding with a surprise visit from my long-time collaborator Kate Maloney.
What all of these tracks have in common, aside from being limited to string instruments, is an intention for you to relinquish your sense of anticipation. Conceptually, they were heavily inspired by particular styles of Ethiopian music such as the tizita, which often lacks any resolving cadences to leave you with it’s trademark evocation of longing without resolution.
So I guess there is a certain amount of irony in the name Music for Staying Warm. Drone III definitely isn’t warm. But refuge is just as often acceptance of where you are as it is an escape, and I hope that, whatever I was thinking when I wrote this music, you are able to contextualise it in your own life and find your own meaning." -Justin
All songs composed by Justin Wright
Violin: Kate Maloney
Additional violin by Taylor Mitz
Viola: Kate Maloney and Simran Singh
Cello: Justin Wright
Upright bass: Alex Kasimir-Smith
Recorded by James Clemens-Seely (Rolston Hall, Banff Centre), Jack Kelly, (McGill Studios) and Justin Wright
Mixed by Pietro Amato at Skybarn
Mastered by Lawrence English
Cover art by Amanda Durepos
Drone Garden (Excerpt)
8 violins, 8 violas, 8 cellos, and one contrabass or extra cello
Composition, programming, design, and cello by Justin Wright
Drone Garden is a composition in the form of a computer application. Multiple home listeners can connect online to wander together through a giant room with 25 pre-recorded audio sources. Through simulated audio spatialization, a listener’s relative proximity to each audio source determines how the aggregate of the parts is perceived, creating a unique experience on every listen.
The online version was exhibited at the PHI Centre’s website in summer 2020, and a virtual reality version is exhibited physically as of February 24.
From the PHI exhibition:
How can this pandemic invite us to conceive alternative forms of meeting up and experiencing music together? This question guides the project Drone Garden, a virtual environment designed by Justin Wright to propose a new way of listening and being together. This space…allows you to hear Wright’s original composition, a microtonal work for 25 musicians, in 3 movements that cycle indefinitely…. The online mode, where you can wander around with other users on the platform, offers a digital version of the social aspect of a music concert.
Peter Broderick Plays Justin Wright
April 3, 2020
First Terrace invite Peter Broderick to rework two compositions from Justin Wright’s 2019 album ‘Music For Staying Warm’.
Renowned as an adept reworker (see Peter Broderick & Friends play Arthur Russel) Peter has produced two typically graceful versions for piano, highlighting the strength of Justin’s melody writing and transposing the works into a soundworld alongside that of Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds or Bing & Ruth.
Justin has also gone back into the studio to produce an extended mix of Drone III. Easing itself across a whole side of vinyl, it uses its generous new run time to tease out the details of the original recording, examining each layer in a meditative procession. The recording is cut with dreamlike snippets of conversations and field recordings, taken from the original recording sessions in the remote Banff Centre in Canada.
The recordings are released in a limited edition of 150 white label 12”s, handstamped & numbered with love and each featuring a homemade lino print which seals the record shut. The artwork was created by Louise Overy (who happens to be the mother of FT co-founder Joe Summers).
Pattern Seeker
May 2, 2017
Recorded by Justin Wright at the Banff Centre for the Arts & McGill Studios
Mixed by Jack Kelly at McGill Studios
Mastered by Philip Gosselin at Le Lab Mastering
Written and Produced by Justin Wright
Artwork by Amanda Durepos
Design by Justin Wright
Cello, Synthesizers, Piano - Justin Wright
Violin - Kate Maloney
Piano - David Quigley