Drexler (Adrian Leung) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, & producer from Sydney, Australia with a debut album set for release this week via Rhodium Publishing. Recorded predominantly in his studio in North West London, where he is now based, Handles infuses intimate chamber strings with piano, synth, minimal percussion and guitar while paying special attention to sound production techniques and experimentation with acoustic spaces. The album also incorporates field recordings from Leung’s travels across the globe including gentle flickering sounds from Lake Kawaguchi in Japan, native birds and burning embers from a countryside campfire in New South Wales, and the rattling hum of a London tube.
Handles, we are told, was “inspired by new beginnings and ideas of rebirth” which goes a long way toward explaining its exhiliatory nature. Drexler’s music is spry, colorful, and infectiously melodic and his arrangements are both imaginative and inventive. There is perhaps no better example of this than the album’s opening track “Lightness”, featured here in a video that takes us from the interior rooms of the artist’s studio to an open rooftop from which a string quartet releases a rapturous euphony skyward.
“Having built a career in composing for film and advertising, it was particularly freeing to write without any direction and purpose, letting the music go on its own journey. Having the space to experiment allowed the music to go to some unexpected and wonderful places. Although ‘Handles’ marks a new beginning for me, it’s my lifetime of musical influences, collaborating with old friends, and sound recordings of memories past that helped forge this album.”- Drexler
Links:Â Bandcamp (CD/DL)Â |Â Interview (Introducing Drexler)
Handles will be available on CD & digital from Rhodium beginning this Friday, July 17, 2020, and features artwork & design by Julian Frener and Elizaveta Pogossov.
Stationary Travels 