On September 12th, Curious Music will issue the first physical editions or Peter ChilversDust series: 10” vinyl EPs of Dust 1, Dust 2, and Dust 3. These beautifully crafted, landmark releases feature artwork by Italian multimedia artist Petulia Mattioli, whose collaborations include work with Alva Noto, Fennesz, Harold Budd, and Toshinori Kondo. Her visual language merges photographic abstraction with elemental texture — a fitting complement to the sound world of Dust.

Pressed on Sea Blue, Green, and Coke Bottle Green vinyl, the EPs will be available individually or as a bundled set. In contrast to the spatial openness of the Dolby Atmos mixes, the vinyl format introduces a new analogue dimension to the Dust series — one of tactility, focus, and warmth — adding depth to the way these works can be experienced and inhabited.

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PETER CHILVERS TALKS ABOUT DUST

The piano

I’ve been playing the piano for nearly fifty years, improvising on it is second nature to me. I’m fascinated by the possibilities of extending it both sonically and electronically. The final two tracks (Life Finding Form and In Hidden Places) are essentially piano sextets, I love the space that creates.

Themes

I’m intruiged by processes in nature ; from the ways galaxies or weather systems form to the way surfaces decay or are overrun with moss. That’s always at the back of my mind when I make music this way, I’m looking to give notes life after they leave my fingers. These ideas are brilliantly reflected in the visual representation that the artist Petulia Mattioli created for this project.

ENO INFLUENCE

For nearly two decades, I’ve been developing software with Brian Eno to perform many exotic types of music manipulation. While Brian’s focus has been on generative music, my main interest has been on live improvisation. During the lockdown, I began developing a set of tools with this in mind ; I’ll improvise an idea, then continue to improvise as my laptop echoes back variations on the idea.

Most of the tracks across Dust involved this process in some form. Often I’d take the initial pieces and shape them further, sometimes improvising additional layers, other times, particularly on the later tracks in the series, I’d simply cut sections.

ABOUT PETER CHILVERS

Since 2006, Chilvers has worked as a musical and technical assistant to Brian Eno on projects including the soundtracks to the film The Lovely Bones (2008) and video game Spore (2008), album collaborations with David Byrne and the releases Small Craft on a Milk Sea (2010), Drums Between the Bells (2011) and Lux (2012). He worked as Assistant Producer on Eno’s 2016 release The Ship for which he also helped develop a multi-speaker installation which has been shown in many countries.

As one of the earliest successes when Apple’s App Store debuted in 2008, Bloom continues to be fondly remembered. This led in 2018 to a collaboration with Microsoft to produce Bloom: Open World – an augmented reality installation shown in Denmark, and Bloom: 10 Worlds – a complete reimagining of the app for modern phones and tablets. Eno and Chilvers were also commissioned to create Hypnotised – a customised version of Bloom for use in Coldplay’s live stadium shows.

Chilvers has toured with Karl Hyde (Underworld) and recorded numerous albums with vocalists Tim Bowness and Sandra O’Neill, as well as several solo instrumental albums. Many of these were released through Burning Shed, the online label he co-founded in 2001 with Tim Bowness and Pete Morgan.