LOS ANGELES, Oct 18 — Iconic 20th century American photographer, William Eggleston, who championed color photography is switching up the senses and releasing a collection of musical recordings from the 1980s.
For Eggleston, now 78, music will supplement his otherwise visual body of work.
Though not widely known, it's a component that has long been part of his identity.
The Observer stated: "He learned to play on the parlor piano in his family's home... and has continued to play throughout his life."
Eggleston was, per his record label, influenced by Bach, Handel, gospel, country, and popular selections from the Great American Songbook.
The New York Times remarked that his connection to music has pop culture precedents: "William Eggleston's photographs have adorned album covers for years: He has lent his singular eye to projects by Big Star, Joanna Newsom and Spoon."
His album is entitled Musik — the German spelling, in honour of Johann Sebastian Bach — and it arrives via Secretly Canadian. The Bloomington, Indiana-based record label has also put out Antony and the Johnsons, Bon Iver, the War on Drugs, and Yoko Ono, among others.
There are 13 tracks, many christened Untitled Improvisation, as well as standards by Gilbert and Sullivan and Lerner and Loewe.
The album is composed of improvised symphonic numbers the artist recorded in the 1980s on a synthesiser.
The Secretly Canadian website expanded: "Eggleston, who disdained digital cameras and modernity in general, became surprisingly fascinated with a synthesiser, the Korg OW/1 FD Pro, which had 88 piano-like keys, and in addition to being able to emulate the sound of any instrument, also contained a four-track sequencer that allowed him to expand the palette of his music."
The tracks were cut from some 60 plus hours of music, all recovered and digitized from the floppy disks they were saved on.
Tom Lunt, co-founder of the record label Numero Group, produced the album.
Eggleston shared the first song from the album in late August, Untitled Improvisation FD 1.10. The visuals for the song were filmed in his Memphis apartment; the track is played on custom audio equipment built by his son, William Eggleston III. Artnews described the track as "big and dramatic but not especially representative of the whole, which includes other more expressly electronic tracks that tend toward the spacey and the celestial."
David Lynch, a fan of Eggleston, exhibited his work at his Festival of Disruption in New York last weekend, on October 14 and 15. Lynch described the album as “music of wild joy with freedom and bright, vivid colors.”
Secretly Canadian noted "Eggleston lives today in a small apartment off Memphis' Overton Park that he shares with a 9-foot Bosendorfer grand piano and an arsenal of ultra-high fidelity audio equipment, some of which was designed by his son."
Musik comes out on LP, CD, and digital download on October 20. — AFP-Relaxnews
