When: 7.30pm on Tuesday 15 July 2014
Where: The Deaf Institute, 135 Grosvenor Street, Manchester M1 7HE

We’re delighted to be bringing Owen Pallett back to Manchester, touring his new album In Conflict.

Owen Pallett‘s new album on Domino, In Conflict, is full of love songs – more specifically, songs about liminal states and our loved ones locked in battle with them. ‘The record is meant to approach “insanity” in a positive way,’ Owen says – emphasis on the ironising scare quotes around singular notions of insanity. ‘Depression, addiction, gender trouble, and the creative state are presented as positive, loveable, empathetic ways of being. Not preferable, per se, but all as equal, valid positions that we experience, which make us human.’

The songs are pretty but deeply unnerving – they cause discomfort in sensuous & seductive ways. While made with the rigour of a classicist, this isn’t classical music or even indie-classical music.  Pallett is not just ‘approved of’ by Establishment Art Music people (though he is) – he is also beloved for his accessibility; for the way his art reflects & resonates with Mainstream Pop Culture; for the emotionally cathartic outlet his music provides.

In Conflict comes after several years of collaborative work – Owen recently composed music on commission for London’s Barbican, The National Ballet of Canada, and Anonymous 4; contributed arrangements to 25 records including Pet Shop Boys, R.E.M., Robbie Williams, Taylor Swift, Linkin Park and The National; created music for the video games Portal 2 and Sword & Sorcery; and received an Emmy for his soundtrack to the New York Times Magazine-sponsored Fourteen Actors Acting project, as well as an Oscar nomination for his work on Spike Jonze’s Her.

Beyond all that, Owen continues to be a touring member of Arcade Fire, on synths and viola, and has, of late, recorded a half-dozen soundtracks for art films and performance pieces by directors and ensembles not famous enough to mention here (though Owen himself would be as likely to speak of a Toronto metal band he just finished recording as he would his more high-profile collaborations).

The record is the product of a perfectionist. He made it once in Iceland, chucked it, and made it again in two live-to-tape sessions in Montreal. ‘Thirty demos were cut down to twenty and then fifteen for the track list,’ he says. ‘Eight of the songs have been performed live. The earliest of them debuted in 2011. Guest vocalists include several heavenly-bodied women, one best friend and a famous guy.” (Brian Eno’s the famous guy. He sings layered back-up vocals throughout the record, plays synth on The Riverbed and guitar on the title track).

Tour support comes from Fairhorns – aka Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist Matt Loveridge, best known for his role as guitar abuser and keyboard/synth manipulator in acclaimed experimental rock trio Beak> alongside Billy Fuller (Fuzz Against Junk) and Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Quakers).

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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