OUT NOW / The Furcat Records release of MUSIC FROM THE BLACK BOX, a collection 17 mainly instrumental tracks from Tony & Olivier nominated composer & sound designer Nick Powell. The album, gathered from Nick's extensive career of writing for stage & screen, finds music reimagined, re-ordered & revisited in order to create a dreamlike & immersive musical odyssey spanning the melodic to the experimental, but always accessible.
The album also features many of Powell’s frequent collaborators including Alex Lee (Goldfrapp, Massive Attack), Lucy Wilkins (Dot Allison, The Tindersticks), Sarah Willson (Belle & Sebastian), & saxophonist Charlotte Glasson.
RELEASE
The Lehman Trilogy
Hailed by The New York Times as “a genuinely epic production”, The Lehman Trilogy is directed by Academy Award®, Tony Award® & Golden Globe winner Sam Mendes with music & sound design by Nick Powell.
The Lehman Trilogy has performed in Sydney, San Francisco & LA since its acclaimed Broadway & West End runs, which began in 2019.
watch - composer Nick Powell & Music Director/Pianist Candida Caldicot discuss the music behind The Lehman Trilogy, directed by Sam Mendes
RELEASE
Frameless:
The Art Of Abstraction
Frameless: The Art of Abstraction is a beautiful collection of 12 (mostly) instrumentals commissioned for London’s immersive Frameless art gallery in Marble Arch, inspired by some of the great works of abstract expressionism from artists including Kandinksy, Hilma Af Klint, Mondrian & Paul Klee.
First witnessed within the gallery walls, this music now can be enjoyed as an album in its own right.
Includes a stunning array array of guest instrumentalists including Melanie Pappenheim, Charlotte Glasson, Alex Lee, Lucy Wilkins & many others.
The music reflects many of the artists’ connections with 20th century modernist composers & jazz, whilst retaining a unique sonic identity as a very individual response to the works. The result is a uniquely thrilling and suprising sonic journey.
Frameless has been attracting 5 star reviews since its opening in October 2022.
Also available: Frameless: Colour In Motion (listen on SPOTIFY & APPLE MUSIC) - by Nick Powell with Benjamin Grant. An ambient dive into the landscapes & environments conjured by 7 of the most famous works of post impressionism.
RELEASE
Un Efecto Óptico
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Nick Powell
listen - Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music
This is the fourth collaboration between Spanish film director Juan Cavestany & composer Nick Powell, following on from the films Dispongo De Barcos , 2010, Gente En Sitios, 2013 & Madrid Int., 2020.
“For Un Efecto Óptico we both wanted to carry out a more intense collaboration, to create a more ambitious soundtrack… that ended up occupying more than 90 percent of the footage”, says Juan Cavestany.
According to Nick: “In terms of style, we wanted it to be reminiscent of the atmosphere of old Hollywood melodramas & to transform into something more hypnotic & sinister as the characters’ situation darkens.”
Providing ‘melodrama & terror’, this soundtrack is excessively present throughout the comedy, echoing the characters’ trapped situation…
. . . “Nick is a musician whom I met through the projects of [theater company] Animalario..,” explains Juan Cavestany. “It is a very long, very ambitious soundtrack … & he has done a fascinating thing, with many shapes, many colors, very disparate and very cinematographic in the sense that it has a lot of weight in the film: sometimes it accompanies it & sometimes it has a life of its own ”. from interview with film director Juan Cavestany, by Cesar Noragueda
"Its genre is so unclassifiable that it’s necessary to let yourself be carried away by the magnificent & continuous music that accompanies the film.""… Nick Powell's soundtrack works just as well as Angelo Badalamenti's for Twin Peaks""The Best: the soundtrack by Nick Powell, which accompanies the characters at all times, & is transforming, telling its own story."
Madrid, Int.
'Madrid, Int.', is the first Spanish feature film made during the confinement of Covid-19 in 2020, by Spanish Director Juan Cavestany & featuring the track OUT OF KEY from the album WALLS FALL DOWN by Nick Powell.
The film was planned, shot & finished during lockdown - carried out with the collaboration of one hundred quarantined people.
Moving gently between moments of the every day in a time of lockdown, ‘Madrid, Int.’ beautifully captures recognisable actions & emotions.
"It is a documentary not about the coronavirus, but about the intimate experience of the confinement ...”