David Norland to Release Debut Album GLAM TEAR STAIN

By: Oct. 31, 2019
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David Norland to Release Debut Album GLAM TEAR STAIN

LA-based, English neo-classical composer, David Norland, has been lauded over the years for his musical collaborations for film and TV. He recently composed the score to the Emmy, Critics' Choice and Writers Guild of America nominated 2018 HBO film "My Dinner with Herve" (starring Peter Dinklage and Jamie Dornan), the film "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" (which won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2010, the IDA Best Feature award, an Emmy award, and numerous other best documentary awards around the world), in addition to the score for the 2017's "November Criminals" (starring Chloe Moretz and Ansel Elgort). He was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction And Composition For A Drama Series in 2019. Norland is also known for his musical collaborations in the news and TV worlds including "20/20", "Good Morning America", and "The View", among many others. Now he is proud to announce that he will be releasing his debut full length solo album, "Glam Tear Stain", tomorrow, 11/1 on Denovali Records, his debut for the German independent music label.

Produced and mixed by Norland, who drew from influences as diverse as Max Richter, Steve Reich, Future Sound Of London and 16th century English choral music, "Glam Tear Stain" combines electronic influences, elements of his film scoring work and more intimate, minimalistic piano and string arrangements. Simple, melodic and tonal themes for piano and strings are filtered through the electronic, spatial and experimental lens of his earlier musical ventures and was made over a period of personal sadness, change and acceptance.

Norland says, "After working on scores for the past decade or more, I wanted to rediscover what my own voice was at this point. I had started some of the pieces on 'Glam Tear Stain' over that period, but had never finished them to my own satisfaction. I found that the mechanism inside me that says 'this is finished' had disappeared. I'd been relying on my film-making collaborators for that, and had to re-learn it. The approach I took was - I'll keep working on it until I don't feel it's getting any better, and that's how I'll know it's finished."

Glam Tear Stain begins with the deeply emotive "Agate Or Barium", which is based around delicate piano and strings, combined with unexpected textures and rhythmic tones. About the track Norland says, "Acceptance is really always acceptance of something you don't want, or wish was different. So it always has a fellow traveler, which is yearning - the yearning for the outcome you hoped for, for the thing which for some reason can't be, however clear it is to you that it would be better. Hopes and reality."

The second single from the album, "Dark Boots Chorale", he describes as "a string quintet, a honkytonk piano and a tube train. A sad chord progression looping round and round, expanding, contracting, a tiny piece of history repeating in different guises. The tube train races to Blackhorse Road, where the spirit of revolution is alive and well."

Other highlights of "Glam Tear Stain" include the middle-eastern atmospherics of "Barotraum", which Norland describes as "A dream of pressure? A dream caused by pressure? A dream itself under pressure, and squirting out into the real world like toothpaste from a tube? One thing's for sure, there's dreaming and pressure involved.", and the fragile beauty of "On The Needle And The Wound", which move between contemporary minimalism and electronics.

A chorister from the age of 11, singing daily in Westminster Abbey, and a boy treble in The Elizabethan Consort of Voices - a touring choral group of the time, Norland also composes choral music. His electronic band Solar Twins was signed by Madonna to Maverick Records, and rode high on the US dance charts, and his record writing, production and mixing work with Jamaican legends Sly and Robbie has been nominated for a Grammy.


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