Drexler
Model House
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Composer Adrian Leung (Dambe, No More Wings, When a City Rises) launched his second album as Drexler with an evening of film and live performance at Pianodrome in Edinburgh on Saturday 21 February.
The record, Olympia-5, is a collection of 16 restrained and atmospheric pieces for piano that channel grief, distance and hope into an a collection created for Leung’s father, at the time isolated in hospital following a relapse with lymphoma.
Bringing the music even further to life, Leung collaborated with filmmakers on select tracks for an accompanying suite of videos that appeared alongside the performance.
“My father, who lives in Australia, relapsed with lymphoma,” says Leung. “He was really struggling and spent most of his days lying in bed, with no energy to watch TV, use his phone or read the paper. He was mostly on his own, receiving visits only from my uncle.
“I recorded piano music for him. The idea was to add some ambience to his hospital room and simply let him know I was thinking of him. It felt like a gentle way to show love without requiring anything from him in return.”
The music was written and recorded in real time, with Leung improvising each piece and allowing memories to surface.
‘Model House’, created in collaboration with Northern Irish filmmaker Kiran Acharya, is a piece with a searching ambience and recurring phrases that strives for a kind of clarity and resolution at an uncertain time.
With personal footage from locations as varied as London, Belfast, Bergen and Prague, the impressionistic, reflective video captures a sense of longing and of life, all too quickly, flashing before our eyes.
‘Model House’ appeared alongside collaborations with Hannah Papacek Harper (‘Prague’), Ciara Flint (‘Kirrikee’), Isaac Knights-Washbourn (‘Saturdays’) and Mark Cousins (‘Dare You’).
In addition, Leung and Acharya collaborated on a limited number of framed prints for the event, including an augmented reality overlay allowing the video to play on paper, offering a ‘film inside a frame’.
“I’ve been incredibly lucky to collaborate with some of my favourite filmmakers,” says Leung. The films span Scotland, Australia, Hong Kong, Norway and Bangladesh, connected by shared themes of place, distance, stillness, memory and family.”
● Olympia-5 by Drexler is out now on Sonder House.
MUSIC VIDEO & PRINT WITH AR (UK & EU, 5 MINS)
Drexler – Model House
FROM THE ALBUM
Olympia-5
COMPOSED BY
Adrian Leung / Drexler
MIX & MASTER
Bobby Williams
MODEL HOUSE VIDEO DIRECTED BY
Kiran Acharya
PRODUCED BY
