Drummer turns ambitious field recordist
Who?
It’s hard to believe that French-American musician and composer Louis Giannamore only recently celebrated the release of his debut solo album. Since his days at Boston’s prestigious Berklee School of Music, the artist, who’s now based in London, cut his teeth as a touring drummer, playing sold-out arenas the world over with Aussie alt-rockers Gang Of Youths and English heavy metal outfit Loathe. He’s a dab hand at composing for film too, having scored the feature ‘Topper’ and surrealist horror short ‘Vibrator Girl’, which premiered at last year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Why Louis Giannamore?
Released in December, Giannamore’s debut album ‘World Tour!’ is a sublime collage of field recordings taken while travelling the world as a musician. Using only an iPhone to diarise the sounds of street performers, sirens, horns, bird calls, wind, waves, thunderstorms, construction sites, crickets, taps, door hinges, bicycles, slot machines and more, it makes for a stunning aural kaleidoscope. “This album is my emotional journey, from glamorous to gruelling, of the extensive year I experienced on tour, reliving those moments through song, made from sounds both near and far,” says Giannamore.
Tell Us More…
Giannamore cites musician and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause’s book ‘The Great Animal Orchestra’ as a key inspiration. He has squeezed a whopping 400 individual field recordings into ‘World Tour!’, many of them snapshots of live music in all manner of public settings and guises. But you might be surprised to learn this project was not born out of spontaneity. “I knew at the start of 2022, when I was handed my touring schedule, this was the year to finally bring this idea to life, to capture the world through sound and create structured music through sampling,” he says. Here’s to more of the same.
‘World Tour!’ is out via Bandcamp
