SQUIRREL MAIL #13

Hi everyone!

Thanks for all the messages of support after the last Squirrel Mail.

As always there is so much to say... quite overwhelming writing it all down in one place... Here's an overview of some of the things coming next for me!

HRÍM - Ástarnetið & ICELAND AIRWAVES

I'm in a band called Hrím with two of my best friends - icelandic folk singer Ösp and modular synthesist and coder Cherif Hashizume and we're releasing our very first single, Ástarnetið, this Friday!  We've decided to final start releasing musicin the build up to our debut at Iceland Airwaves Festival in November. This song is in Icelandic and features Manu Delago on hang drum.

You can pre-buy here http:// https://apple.co/2JNMCvE

The beautiful photo used in our artwork is by Guðný Sigríður Ólafsdóttir and was taken near wear Ösp lives in the North of Iceland!

trAnSition - ARTS COUNCIL DYCP GRANT

Exciting news! I've been awarded £10,000 by Arts Council England to develop my creative practice for my next project trAnSition. I will be working with Ingmar Kamalagharan, Cherif Hashizume and Jake Miller across three phases to develop extended vocal techniques and an innovative new voice led AI app that we will use to make new music. There will be more news on this as we get to work over the coming months... Looking forward to holing myself away and getting deep into some singing.

DAFFODIL

My PRS Momentum funded animated music film Daffodil is now officially complete! I'll admit to shedding some tears watching it back at the Brunel Thames Tunnel Shaft private screening (partly out of lack of sleep) it's been such a labour of love. It was really amazing to see Tom's animations on a big screen. The film has now been submitted to festivals... so watch this space for release plans and more news as it comes... I've also started planning my next film... top secret for now though....

BBC PROMS, Nitin Sawhney, Nakhane Brian Jones (Rolling Stones)...

London Contemporary Voices (the choir I co-founded and direct) is performing its second BBC Prom on 25th July at Royal Albert Hall with Public Service Broadcasting! On 26 September we'll be returning to Royal Albert Hall to perform as part of Nitin Sawhney's Beyond Skin anniversary show. I will be working closely with Nitin over the coming weeks - total dream come true - I listened to that album virtually every day in my teens. Immediately after that on 28th and 29th September, following our appearance with them at Comic Relief we will be at Royal Albert Hall with Keane... perhaps we should just set up camp....On 9th August I'll be singing with queer South African artist (and dear friend!) Nakhane singing at Nile Rogers' Meltdown Festival at Southbank. on 17th August LCV will be performing at an all star tribute to Rolling Stones/Beatles legend Brian Jones' in aid of the David Lynch Foundation. LCV also performed at London Pride in Trafalgar Square... with me as my drag alter ego Lina... who met Sadiq Khan!

Bit of a busy few weeks then...

SQUIRREL MAIL #12

PRS Momentum - Emperor's New Mind - Animated Film & Soundtrack!!!

Hi!

EXCITING NEWS!

PRS Foundation, Arts Council England, Spotify and PPL have awarded me the PRS Momentum Music Fund!

I'm feeling very soppy right now. It's almost exactly a year since I released Mesonoxian. I'll be working with an incredible team of people to create an animated film and soundtrack including Thomas H Rawle, Cherif Hashizume and my brother Ingmar Kamalagharan. As well as hopefully being a beautiful thing in itself, It will be a surreal and artful exploration into consciousness, artificial intelligence and quantum physics. I'll be sharing more ideas about these things and our exciting dabblings in the coming weeks and months.

Today, I'm watching the sea - writing lyrics - thinking about swarming starlings, branching trees and mad ideas like quantum activity in microtubials between neurons. I'm loving dusting off my old physics books and thinking about these things (and thinking about whatever 'thinking' even is).

I will leave you with some pictures from my performances with  Hrím, Manu Delago and Hunrosa at London Contemporary Voices Beneath the Tracks at Omeara earlier this month.

Love, 

Anil
xxxx

SQUIRREL MAIL #11

Hi

So much to tell you all about!

I'm going to be performing at London Contemporary Voices' second installation of Omeara: Beneath the Tracks on 2nd October 2017. This time I will be singing with Manu Delago (Bjork/Anoushka Shankar), Hunrosa(Cinematic Orchestra) and my band Hrím! Ösp, our singer, is coming back from Iceland and, amongst others, we'll be performing our song Ástarnetið with Manu Delago and London Contemporary Voices choir.  Check out the video below :)
TICKETS HERE: https://www.skiddle.com/…/Beneath-The-Tracks-LCV-…/13047375/

6th OCT: MESONOXIAN LIVE AT CAMDEN ASSEMBLY HALL (supporting SAM BROOKES)

Here are some pics of my performance with harpist Glenda Allaway at our first Beneath the Tracks back in May. I'll be doing a stripped back set with just Glenda, Sian and I on 6th October at Camden Assembly Hall supporting the incredible and lovely Sam Brookes.

Get your tickets here:

http://www.alttickets.com/sam-brookes-camden-assembly-formerly-barfly-2017-10-06-19-00

BBC PROMS: Songs of Scott Walker with Heritage Orchestra, London Contemporary Voices, Jarvis Cocker, Susanne Sundfor, John Grant and Richard Hawley

It's been full tilt, beautiful and amazing this Summer. Highlights include festival season with London Contemporary Voices including special collaborations with beatboxer Reeps One an amazing Wilderness Festival and the last ever Secret Garden Party. Here is some footage of us performing at the BBC Proms with Heritage Orchestra, Jarvis Cocker, Susanne Sundfor, John Grant and Richard Hawley. 

UNION CHAPEL: CONFLUENCE

I performed Confluence our annual London Contemporary Voices Summer show at Union Chapel. This time I performed new songs I've written with Stet (aka Bjork/Madonna/Imogen Heap producer Guy Sigsworth) as part of his set as well as performing some special choir versions of songs from Mesonoxian. Here are some pics:

SO MUCH more to tell you about! But more soon! 

Big love

Anil (Squirrel XXX)

SQUIRREL MAIL #10

Hi!

Big love to you all from the sea - We've moved! More about that and some other exciting news further down. First up -

Tickets are now on sale for my next London headline show on 18 APR at The Lexington!

You can grab them here http://www.seetickets.com/tour/anil-sebastian

"An ambitious and emotionally powerful show. One of the highlights of the year."  
Mark Muldoon, Glastonbury Emerging Talent Judge

 "adventurous electronic pop, with R&B touches and immense soul. Sebastian is frighteningly talented"  Line of Best Fit

---

30 March - Mesonoxian Acoustic - Supporting Manu Delago

I'm supporting the amazingly talented Manu Delago at Islington Assembly Hall on March 30th 2017. Harpist Glenda Allaway and I are doing some really special acoustic versions of Mesonoxian songs - can't wait!

Tickets here - http://www.soundcrashmusic.com/manu-delago-iah/

Here is the video to Drumheart - a song Manu and I wrote for his album Silver Kobalt. We had beautiful times shooting the video out in Austria last year - getting wrapped and unwrapped in a blue cloth!

Life by the sea

...I am now living on top of a cliff. Each day is different. It's often silent. One night the moon was huge and orange. Other nights, the stars are the only light. The trees are amazing - old and battered by the salt and wind. I love it so far. Writing Album Two has begun. We've also put the finishing touches to a really special Deluxe version of Mesonoxian with harps and choirs as well as some live recordings and remixes. More news on that soon!

Nakhane

On other news, this month I contributed a choral arrangement to South African artist Nakhane's new album which Ben Christophers is producing. We recorded it with the choir (LCV of course!) on Friday. It's been incredible working on it - I was surprised by quite how moved I was - I can't even begin - still echoing in my mind all mixed in with the sound of the sea (and sea gulls haha). 


Love
Anil (Squirrel)
X-X-X-X

SQUIRREL MAIL #9

Mesonoxian - big love & thank you!

My album Mesonoxian is finally here! It's been such an epic couple of months... 

Mesonoxian is available to buy at www.anilsebastian.com

This is a very personal release for me - so it's been hard to know what to write in such strange political times. After a couple of weeks of flitting between hermitting, hibernating & partying - it seems a good time to say something about it all. Ingmar (my brother and I) set up our own label Relative State Records - and with some help from some seriously dedicated and amazing people, we've finally done it and we're immensely proud of Mesonoxian. It's been a long time coming and I'm really overwhelmed by all your support.

To celebrate - here are some pics I found of Ingmar  & I making stuff & partying.

Mesonoxian - what it's all about

Mesonoxian means ‘pertaining to midnight’. I was a terrible insomniac sleep-walker kid - still am. I remember watching the stars from my window when I was eight or so, wanting to Jack-and-the-Beanstalk myself off the planet... to begin again. If we could leave and start again, would we fail in the same ways again? Could we fail better than we have? Who would we take? Hiraeth, the title of the animated film for my first two singles "Human" and "Living" is a Welsh word that describes the feeling I had - a homesick grief for something that no longer exists (or in this case probably never did). We are tiny in the universe but look to space, the cold desolate void that surrounds us, as an expanse of hope and the future. 

Mesonoxian is about all of these things. 

It’s about the illusory nature of time and our conception of it - both from a personal point of view and a physics point of view. Nearly all of the songs started in my teens and are about my Dad’s death. I abandoned them for a long time and rediscovered them recently during a breakdown and decided it was time to finish them.

Mesonoxian is also a lot about a beautiful three-way connection that blew me open and - oddly - became the last step in my grief over my Dad’s death…somehow it contained the final piece of the puzzle and I was able to finish the songs. 

Here are some nice things other people have said about the record

Line of Best Fit

"The beguiling release is bursting with ruminations on life and death and mental states - it's a gorgeous listen from start to end, but scratch under the surface and it can be harrowing. Sebastian pulls no punches, peeling back his skin to show what's underneath. It's brave at every turn."

Full review & interview: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/latest-news/anil-sebastian-streams-new-record-mesonoxian

Candid Magazine

"I am utterly heartbroken to have not found this artist sooner. Since being introduced to Anil Sebastian and his work I have had it on repeat, and I have been pulled into the little world that he has created with his album: Mesonoxian. Produced by Anil himself along with his brother Ingmar and Cherif Hashizume, Mesonoxian is an expansive landscape of sound, shifting from lonely introspection to comforting snugness in the sonic maelstrom of this work."

 Full review: http://www.candidmagazine.com/new-music-anil-sebastian/

PRS Magazine

Here is a fuller interview in PRS Magazine which explains more about what the album is all about.

http://www.m-magazine.co.uk/features/interviews/interview-anil-sebastian/

Mesonoxian Album Launch - Live at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

Here are some photos by Carsten Windhorst of my album launch at ICA! More gigs will be announced in the coming weeks .

That's all for now! Massive love!

Anil
xxxx

SQUIRREL MAIL #8

Hello!!! 

My Closer single is out now and I'm SO excited to share Rino Stefano Tagliafierro's beautiful video for it. It premiered earlier on New York based Stereogum.  Here it is!

In the last squirrel mail, I tallked about how Closer is about a calm, unspoken erasure of life to depression. It is the biggest cause of death for under 30s  - but we don’t speak of it - it is a taboo. As it was World Mental Health day last week, it feels even more right to finally be putting this track out.

The single is available to BUY/STREAM here: 

 https://anilsebastian.lnk.to/closerEM

BBC RADIO LONDON - 16th OCTOBER

I will be performing a special version of Closer with harpist Glenda Allaway at 7 pm on Sonny & Shay, BBC RADIO LONDON. I will also speaking to them about what the track is all about. 

ICA, LONDON on 27th OCTOBER
 
The Mesonoxian Album launch show is coming soon!! So excited. You can buy tickets here http://www.anilsebastian.com/#live-section

Over and out! 

Anil (Squirrel) XX

SQUIRREL MAIL #7

Hi! I've just arrived in Canada from Iceland. Here is the trailer to 'Closer' directed by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro shot in Milan, Italy with Sian O'Gorman transformed into a figure inspired by Gustav Klimt's Mermaids

Mesonoxian Album Launch - ICA - 27th October 2016

Rehearsals for the Mesonoxian Album Launch on 27th October recommence when I get back from the land of fire and ice ;) - going to be epic! We're having live visuals by Casual Psychotic - just seen the first draft and they're really beautiful. You can buy tickets here http://www.anilsebastian.com/#live-section

More about the Closer
 

Sian O'Gorman and I went to Milan to shoot the video with Rino back in April. We drank a lot of Aperol Spritz and ate a lot of gelato. My (incredible) brother Ingmar and I produced the track.

Closer is about a calm, unspoken erasure of life to depression. It is the biggest cause of death for under 30s  - but we don’t speak of it - it is a taboo. It is about fear of death - something that dominates and drives so much human life - sometimes to the point where we fear life itself. It is about the beauty in depression - the dark glittering onyx of it - it is about how we see ourselves - distorted, deformed, painted - but always from behind the veil of our senses - never truly from the outside. It is about standing on the event horizon of a black hole - a kind of l'appel du Vide.

Sian O’Gorman (above), who also sings on the track, appears in the video as a figure inspired by the painting "Mermaids" by Gustav Klimt. The video is split into two parts, one light and one dark. We often live between these parallel realities sliding below and back. Melancholy and happy, distant and but somehow always “Closer."

You can find out more about Rino's amazing work herewww.rinostefanotagliafierro.com. 

Can't wait to share the full video with you next week!
 

Love

Anil
x

SQUIRREL MAIL #6

Hi hi hi 

My third single, We Both Know is out now! AND - I'm really excited to announce that the Mesonoxian album launch show will be on 27th October at the ICA, London. 

Much of 'Mesonoxian' was written around the time of my father’s death. We Both Know' is as much about that as it is about a relationship (and personal) breakdown. In a particularly dark period a couple of years back, I wrote the string arrangement and sent it to our friend Vince Sipprell. He sent back it back recorded perfectly. At the end of each take he had left a little message in a funny voice for me. I will never forget the feeling - really lifted me. Vince died before the track was finished. He was such a kind and exceptional guy. It took me & Ingmar a long time to find our way with it after that- the whole track felt so immersed in grief so we gave the track to Cherif Hashizume. His organic Arca-esque electronics & beats breathed something new into it - it came alive again. I recorded the vocals late in the night at Cafe Music Studios - Cherif supplied me with honey vodka - and we got though it somehow. It now feels forward facing and uplifting in a way I didn't expect to ever experience. Hugest of thanks and squirrel love to Vince, Didier, Ingmar, Kumar and Cherif - you saved my life (literally). 

buy/listen/subscribe here:

Itunes: http://goo.gl/quMOQf
Apple music: http://goo.gl/2jGCqT
Spotify: http://goo.gl/HBz9EC

BBC Introducing & Live Sessions - Record of the Week!

BBC Introducing made ‘Human’ Record of the Week! Last week, I performed a special version of We Both Know with harpist Glenda Allaway live on BBC Asian Network which you can listen here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07q3bl0 between 2:13-2:27. 

In case you missed it, you can also listen to an interview with Sonny & Shay on BBC Radio London about ‘Living’ here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p043gfsw#play from 1:33.

Mesonoxian Album Launch - 27th October 2016 - ICA, London

Advance tickets for the Mesonoxian launch are now available!

You can buy them here http://www.anilsebastian.com/#live-section.

The picture above is of my (part-liquified) band minus Andrew Bird, the latest addition. Andy wrote Human with me and is going to be joining us on all manor of instruments (Glockenspiel, even). Casual Psychotic (the guy that made my Hiraeth film) is going to be doing live visuals - it's going to be beautiful... 

There's a lot to celebrate - even in this strange & dark times - more than ever perhaps :)

Big squirrel love 

Anil
XXXX