Richard J. Birkin

I’m a composer from Derbyshire, England. Principally a guitarist, I also play piano and other bits and bobs. Glockenspiel, celeste, things like that. I’ve made all kinds of music – albums, soundtracks, sound-beds for commercials – but you could probably pigeon hole somewhere between neo-classical, post-rock and folk-tinged indie. I’m self-taught, and for the past few years I’ve been focussing on string arrangements. I love strings. When I get in a room with a string quartet and hear them tuning up – man! My arrangements are kind of pastoral, with a bit of minimalism and romanticism in there too. As well as classical inspirations like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Górecki, Glass, it was John Paul Jones’ arrangements for Led Zep and REM, Mick Harvey and Warren Ellis’ arrangements on ‘No More Shall We Part’, and the whole of Scott 3 that turned me onto arranging. Then discovering Richter and Johannsson – that’s when I realised I wanted to write string-based music from morning to night, every day. As well on cd, vinyl and film, I make music for other formats too. My piece ‘Aves‘ plays every day at noon in the Natural History gallery at Derby Museum (in 6.0 surround sound). ‘Night Sun‘ – a piece for string quartet and toy music box – is part of a touring installation that’s been on the streets of Leeds, Nottingham and Derby so far. The six pieces that make up ‘Songs For Spoken Words‘ are part of an app. I also run Time Travel Opps – a label, digital production company and user experience consultancy. As well as making music, I like making digital things. Richard Birkin is a composer from Derbyshire, England. New album Vigils on Reveal Records CD LP DL March 2016 management: Tom Rose tom@revealrecords.co.uk