{"title":"Robert Stillman","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"what-does-it-mean-to-be-american","title":"What Does It Mean to Be American?","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat Does it Mean to Be American?\u003c\/i\u003e is the eighth solo album by Maine-born, UK-based composer \u0026amp; multi-instrumentalist Robert Stillman. Performed, recorded \u0026amp; mixed by Stillman with a Prince-like versatility, the album takes in elements of jazz, drone, funk, blues, psychedelia, new age \u0026amp; chamber music across its seven tracks.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the opener 'Cherry Ocean', we are treated to Robert's voice for the first time ... the effect is like a lost, sombre Beach Boys demo, with Brian Wilson talking us through the aftermath of a weekend spent in the French Quarter of New Orleans. What follows loops from glass-clinking, freeform jazz ('It's All Is') to angular, rhodes-heavy funk ('Self-image') and dub echo-drenched piano blues ('Acceptance Blues').\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs with much of Robert's music, unexpected swerves and gear shifts are never far away; this is partly due to his improv-driven tape bricolage recording process, but also a wilful defiance to adhere to any particular genre. This fluid, unpredictable approach dovetails perfectly with the subject matter of Stillman's national identity crisis. Nothing is quite as it seems, as oddly rousing militaristic psychedelia, morning reveilles and mountain blues are dismantled in the melting pot.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerhaps most remarkable is the size of Robert's sound on \u003ci\u003eAmerican?\u003c\/i\u003e - a one-man studio has no right to conjure scenes so raucous and convivial. And it's at these half-dreamt fraternal moments, where Stillman seems to touch directly at the tragic, optimistic heart of his question.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Kit Records","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP.","offer_id":50402292007243,"sku":"1141836","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/6a4cfb15-ed82-4211-b83e-f067daacc0c3_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726539423"},{"product_id":"portals-2","title":"Portals","description":"\u003cp\u003eRobert Stillman's much-loved, homespun collection of Fender Rhodes improvisations receives the vinyl treatment from Kit Records.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded to tape in the solitude of Robert's Kent studio, Portals is truly a candid window into the trance-like process of making: melodies, ideas and themes are added folded, concealed and revealed like layers of paper and paint, combining to form an intimately transportive sonic mural.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMost startling are the shifting voices of the Rhodes - from careening, glassy pads to strident basslines, curveball jazz breakdowns or kaleidoscopic marimba flutter. Keys players take note: Portals is a masterclass in restricted virtuosity. Quite how so many worlds are conjured from one instrument across the 35 minute duration of this record, we're not sure.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Kit Records","offers":[{"title":"Orange | LP.","offer_id":50409471541579,"sku":"1142365","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/d5b29357-08d4-4c30-aefc-abbf154f6166_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728371601"},{"product_id":"something-about-living","title":"Something About Living","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSomething About Living \u003c\/em\u003eis an album of live recordings by experimental jazz composer\/multi-instrumentalist Robert Stillman. The music was captured over the course of Stillman's time as the solo support act for The Smile (Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Tom Skinner). The album weaves excerpts from various theater and arena shows along the tour's North American routing into a seamless whole, creating a 40-minute program that represents an expanded version of Stillman's ever-transforming live set.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Kit Records","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50422202007883,"sku":"2223096","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_a9d41098_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726763256"},{"product_id":"10-000-rivers","title":"10,000 Rivers","description":"\u003cp\u003eRobert Stillman didn't set out to make a concept album about Steve Jobs. But as a composer and improviser whose music asks questions about his relationship with reality, a curiosity about the promises and follies of technology took him there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHighly original, wholly unclassifiable, \u003ci\u003e10,000 Rivers\u003c\/i\u003e is part cultural critique, part sonic biography, and takes the form of a series of songs, instrumentals and abstract soundscapes that respond directly to moments or paradigms from Jobs' life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"10,000 Rivers points to an alternative narrative about a man who is tormented by the instability of his reality, so tries to invent his way out of it,\" Stillman explains. \"Ultimately, his tech designs become expressions of his will to replace the messy, disordered, temporary nature of the world with something that strives to be barely physical: streamlined, symmetrical, uncomplicated, and deathless.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStylistically, it leans on Stillman's relationship with the smooth music of Billy Ocean, Gloria Estefan and 10cc from the '80s and early '90s, made at what he calls \"the knife's edge between the human and the digital.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwinkling, synthetic arpeggios sit alongside tumbledown acoustic improvisation – think Mort Garson meets Moondog – fragments of ambient sound collapse into queasy auto-tuned lullabies, the melancholy paradise of Brian Wilson-esque California dreaming dismantled into uncanny free jazz freakouts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on his recent collaborations with Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner as touring support and live band-member for The Smile, Stillman's work has long resisted categorisation, and been presented in a range of media, including installations, performance lectures and 12 solo albums, the most recent of which \u003ci\u003eWhat Does It Mean to Be American?\u003c\/i\u003e takes a similarly conceptual scalpel to complex notions of US identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of Stillman's most ambitious and idiosyncratic projects to date, \u003ci\u003e10,000 Rivers\u003c\/i\u003e is an elegy for the hubris of a humankind trying to design its way to immortality as it falls apart at the seams.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Kit Records","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":55915957092683,"sku":"R8471-5450","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/cover.ki_42b2d801-4e43-4dfd-bd56-d584065a60e1.jpg?v=1763287215"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/robert-stillman.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}