2. Demolition of the no.6 pithead at Whitwick Colliery, Leicestershire, 1986.
06.03.2026 14:48
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2. Demolition of the no.6 pithead at Whitwick Colliery, Leicestershire, 1986.
...also, here's two of the many things that inspired the album:
1. The cooling towers at the decommisioned Ratcliffe Power Station, Nottinghamshire...
“Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is a perfectly realised work, and visionary triumph” —Tom Bolton, The Quietus’ Albums of the Year 2025 “Magical realism meets spoken-word memoir on this riveting new album” —Alan Pedder, The Needle Drop “Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is an important document, a deeply respectful set of audio postcards moving between the past and the future, assuming considerable emotional weight” —Ben Hogwood, musicOMH's Album of the Week “Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is his best work yet” —Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Purposeful Listening The Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, August 2025 —Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily
Here's some of the nice things people said about it. I'm working on some small new releases for later in the year, as usual on my tiny record label, so any sales today go towards funding new things. All your support is massively appreciated, always...
If you haven't already heard my album 'Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator', and you'd like to buy a copy, today is the ideal day, it being Bandcamp Friday... leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/sleep-...
Ooh! I wonder if the Margate show includes my new favourite painting? Certainly worth a day trip. And yes, I suspect the ubiquitity of her work in artbooks and online takes away from the power of seeing the paintings 'in the flesh'.
I've never given much thought to the work of Bridget Riley, which has always seemed a bit like trendy wallpaper to me, but I saw some images of this painting, "Vespertino" (1988), yesterday and I'm completely mesmerised by it. I'd really like to see the real thing somewhere...
Like a motorway journey, the landscape changes incrementally, but the hum of the engine remains constant. This piece by me, 'Freezywater', premiered 10 years ago this week. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkl...
Kenneth Williams' 1963 reading of Gogol's 'Diary of a Madman' is on Radio 4extra this afternoon (part of a whole day of programmes to coincide with his centenary). It's an extraordinary performance: unexpectedly dreamlike, haunting. What a great dramatic actor he was. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
I take it you've seen this clip of Stevie Wonder really enjoying Pléïades? www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kU9...
Ha! "Guarantee you a nightmare" indeed. I'm reminded of Drew Daniel describing listening to La Legende d'Eer on acid... Personally, I hear something joyful in a lot of Xenakis - earthy, physical, cathartic, like dancing.
Xenakis forever!
![Iannis Xenakis - Voile [w/score]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6prtuwtwguyt3xspuxdebwnp/bafkreihg5szljf56xma6pxehwisse74yzk3lbljtrbvju2brsx5cfgumcm@jpeg)
One of the things I love about the music of Iannis Xenakis is how “Xenaskissy” it can be. Unmistakeable, almost like he’s parodying himself sometimes. Who else would have written this? A little 5-minute cataclysm. Sounds like a fissure opening in the earth. Fantastic.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJMU...
How lovely. X
Late to the party here, but I’m another fan of @leochadburn.bsky.social latest album: it’s swirling, mesmerising and I’m haunted by its stories of the Midlands - not far from where I grew up 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Oh thank you Caroline. Really great to hear it resonated with you!
I don't want to say that music peaked in the early 1400s and it's all been downhill since then, but listen to how astonishingly beautiful this is (Bartolomeo da Bologna's 'Arte psalentes'): www.youtube.com/watch?v=4He_...
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:
And THANKS, once more, to everyone who has supported, listened and spread the word about my album this year. It’s been so brilliant to know the music has reached you.
Wishing you all a splendid and joyful New Year. X x x
If you’d like to buy any of my physical or download releases on Bandcamp, I’m having a modest January sale. Use the discount code newyear2026 (valid till the end of January) to get 25% off anything of mine... leochadburn.bandcamp.com
"The record Chadburn has been working towards for years, gloriously realised..."
Thanks to Tim Rutherford-Johnson for putting my 2025 album in his top 10 releases of the year. Take a look at his other (impeccable) choices too, here: purlis.substack.com/p/purposeful...
On his new album, acclaimed British musician and composer Leo Chadburn, who also releases music under the name Simon Bookish, has created an extraordinary self-contained world set in the East Midlands of England, in the county of Leicestershire—a world that that both harks back to the past, to a time of coal mines and power stations, and stretches out far into a post-apocalyptic future. Over four pieces, all around 10 to 11 minutes long, Chadburn narrates his poems, somewhat in the spirit of Ivor Cutler or Alan Moore. Track 1 transports us to abandoned post-industrial towns (it opens with the words “Held in the open hand of the crease of the valley/This town has been abandoned twice”). The opening of track 2 is Chadburn narrating a list of flowers of the East Midlands, and then he turns to the lost occupations of the region (“Collier/Farrier/Rollerman/Waterman/Steeplejack”). On track 3, there are forgotten machines of disused coal mines. Finally, we’re shot through time, to 1000 years from now, on track 4, a landscape of the future where “pink aeroplanes drift overhead/Without pilots/Without passengers/And the sky is a gauze between this world and infinity.” Beneath his words, Chadburn plays bass drum, bass recorder, bowed vibraphone, cymbals, glockenspiel, harmonica, harmonium, prepared piano (fishing line, neodymium magnets and neoprene), shortwave radio, tam-tam, thundersheet, wine glasses, and synthesizers—he creates ambient electronics and drone (track 1), Gregorian chants (track 2), intense, percussive beats with a krautrock feel, beats that become increasingly frantic and train-like (track 3), and crunching footsteps over twisting synth-lines (track 4). “Sleep In the Shadow of the Alternator” is a monumental artistic creation and achievement.
A masterpiece, one for the ages, a truly monumental artistic creation & achievement, by @leochadburn.bsky.social
"Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator," self-released
My favorite experimental/spoken word album of 2025
leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/sleep-...
Here's the review I wrote for WXDU
Thank you so much Gavin! Wonderful.
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...
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.
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
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...