Dr Leo Chadburn

The Marian Consort: The Language of Flowers | Barbican Acclaimed choral ensemble Marian Consort pays tribute to flowers and gardens both actual and allegorical, with music from the late Renaissance to the present day.

Tomorrow (Sunday 7th December), brilliant vocal ensemble The Marian Consort are performing "Flower Dictionary" by me, at Milton Court / The Barbican. This is its first performance in London. Gorgeous programme inspired by plants and nature. Tickets here: www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/202...

The Quietus Albums of the Year 2025 (In Association with Norman Records) | Page 4 of 5 | The Quietus

My album is # 24 in @thequietus.com's 100 albums of 2025. Thank you so much to all tQ writers who chose it! Do go and peruse the whole 100: as usual, the list highlights so many under-sung and brilliant records: thequietus.com/tq-charts/al...

Cover Image of RED AND BLUE by Leo Chadburn: a glowing red and blue symmetrical object (mutations of Margaret Thatcher's face) floats in a void.

Released 10 years ago today, my single-track EP "RED AND BLUE", an anxious collage of pop fragments, field recordings and synthscapes, reflecting on the 1980s UK-US political relationship. I've made it "Name Your Price" (i.e. free to download) on Bandcamp: leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/red-an...

Would you like to see a page from Thomas Kessler's "Piano Control" too?

A masterpiece (currently on my desk too by coincidence). And Wendy Carlos' work being longstandingly totally unavailable anywhere online is a very good example of why holding onto CDs is a good idea.

New Music Show - Leo Chadburn's Listen List - BBC Sounds Tom Service talks to Leo Chadburn about his listening, plus premieres from Donaueschingen.

Really nice to be asked to appear on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show over the weekend, to talk about three tracks I love as part of their new 'Listen List' spot.

Listen again here: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002lnkd

I'm on at 46:05 into the show.

Thank you so much for this. Yes - I'd always had it mind that the album would be one thing: a whole in four "scenes": four points in time, four locations, four seasons, and many small points of interconnection in the text. I'm really glad you listened to it like that. X

Purposeful Listening 1 Beginning/continuing, place/language, tree/mobile, bigness/detail

Strong recommend for Tim Rutherford-Johnson's new Substack (especially for "new music" people). Great, insightful writing, as always. First post delves into music by Mark Fell, Michael Finnissy and Me: purlis.substack.com/p/purposeful...

Voice, body, language, place: these have long been the central preoccupations – basic materials, really – of Leo Chadburn’s work, from his early releases as his avant-pop alter-ego Simon Bookish (‘Portrait of the Artist as a Fountain’) to the stream of recent releases every year or two on his own Library of Nothing Records label: The Subject/The Object, Slower/Talker, The Primordial Pieces. For my money, his latest album, Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is his best yet, and the one to which so much of what he has made before seems to have been leaning.

Wonderful and perceptive writing about "Sleep in the Shadow..." from Tim Rutherford-Johnson here, touching on place, Englishness and Russell Hoban... Thank you! johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/t...

New Music Show - Strange Loops - BBC Sounds Cutting-edge and experimental new music in live performance, plus interviews and features.

"We’re in a world of haunted psychogeography here, all the more disturbing because it’s all real: the drones, the hum, Leo Chadburn’s voice, the bells, the recordings that sound like the actuality of a recent but imagined past…" www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Thank you so much! Wonderful to hear that.

Thanks so much for including me - a great list of last month's releases, as ever, from Peter Margasak here:

Leo Chadburn Broadcasts a Radiophonic Lullaby of Decline The experimental composer's album 'Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator' transforms his childhood memories of Coalville's mines and factories into a dreamlike narrative about the East Midlands' vanished industry.

Experimental composer Leo Chadburn's album 'Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator' transforms his childhood memories of Coalville's mines and factories into a dreamlike narrative about the East Midlands' vanished industry.

Leo Chadburn Broadcasts a Radiophonic Lullaby of Industrial Decline:

Leo Chadburn Leo Chadburn (London, UK) FKA Simon Bookish is a composer of experimental and 'avant-pop' music, vocalist and writer. His unpredictable work includes music for classical ensembles, dramatic solo perfo...

I apologise for adding to the #BandcampFriday deluge, but if you'd like to buy my records, today is ideal. I know the very idea of paying for music is withering away these days, but as a 100% independent, DIY musician, your support is a big deal. I'm hugely thankful for it: leochadburn.bandcamp.com

Oh ha ha! Thank you. X

Lists can be poetic as well as functional. Naming in that direct way conveys a sense of concreteness. Leo Chadburn's "Magic Flora Of The East Midlands", the second of four tracks, starts with a spoken catalogue of plants, minimally glossed with healing or magical qualities traditionally attributed to each, while Latin botanical names are intoned by a monastic voice. This curiously engrossing piece also incorporates a list of traditional occupations - wheelwright, ostler, blacksmith, and so on. Words can generate extensive webs of association, and through time they acquire a patina of accrued meaning. Through texts which engage with landscape, regional history, perception and personal recollection, Chadburn invites us to experience the chemistry of language, its precipitation of imagery, embellished with field recordings and finely judged instrumental and electronic enhancements. An evocative, sonically engaging and thought-provoking work.

Thanks to The Wire (500th issue published this week!) for these words about my new album:

Really nice that my new album is in amongst the best albums this month... thank you thank you!

Oh, thank you!

Leo Chadburn Broadcasts a Radiophonic Lullaby of Decline The experimental composer's album 'Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator' transforms his childhood memories of Coalville's mines and factories into a dreamlike narrative about the East Midlands' vanis...

ICYMI... an interview with me here about the new album (and other matters): www.thetonearm.com/leo-chadburn...

Thanks so much to The Tonearm for doing this interview with me, about the new album (out today), why the radio is important, the East Midlands, and a belated postscript to the Simon Bookish project: www.thetonearm.com/leo-chadburn...

This is a really excellent choice of records, notwithstanding one of them being by me. Also, Dale's new album is his best yet and you should check it out - unnverving and hilarious, ferocious and intimate, red-raw drum machines and saucy vocals.

Leo Chadburn – Sleep In The Shadow Of The Alternator An important document, this deeply respectful set of audio postcards moves between the past and the future, forming a work that assumes symphonic dimensions

Leo Chadburn – Sleep In The Shadow Of The Alternator | An important document, this deeply respectful set of audio postcards moves between the past and the future, forming a work that assumes symphonic dimensions

Thank you!

🖤

Thank you so much Gerry!

Thanks so much to The Tonearm for doing this interview with me, about the new album (out today), why the radio is important, the East Midlands, and a belated postscript to the Simon Bookish project: www.thetonearm.com/leo-chadburn...

The new album is out now! leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/sleep-...

Leo Chadburn – Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator | The Quietus The composer (fka Simon Bookish) evokes visionary worlds from the ruins of Leicestershire's coal mining and power-generating past

Excellent review by ‪@drtombolton.bsky.social‬ of today's new @leochadburn.bsky.social LP: "...draws on a tradition of poets writing the landscapes that fill their minds. reminiscent of Ivor Cutler, Alan Moore... a perfectly realised work and visionary triumph."

thequietus.com/quietus-revi...

Great review (by Tom Bolton) of the new album (which comes out on Friday) on The Quietus today. Thank you!

Great show here! Thanks for including new track of mine...