Back in November, Sunroof announced the release of Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2, and shared the first single ‘January #2’. With release day less than a month away, the duo of Mute founder Daniel Miller and legendary producer, engineer and artist Gareth Jones have shared a second track called ‘November’. They are offering it with a video created by themselves. Watch it now.

Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 is out on February 17th through the Parallel Series of Mute

Last year, the founder of Mute, Daniel Miller, and legendary producer, engineer and artist Gareth Jones, who have been friends and collaborators for four decades decades, released their collaborative album, Electronic Music Improvisations Vol. 1, under the name Sunroof. Now the pair have announced its follow-up, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2. A collection of eight improvised modular pieces recorded at their respective homes, it follows the same principle as the previous volume, with no pre-planning and no rehearsal.  “I suppose this is the difficult second album,” Gareth explained, “it took 40 years to make the first album and just nine months to create this one!” Daniel continues, “We got on a roll and didn’t really stop recording once we had that momentum.”

Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 is set for release on February 17th through the Parallel Series of Mute and ahead of it Sunroof have shared the first single, ‘January #2’. It comes with a video created by themselves and you can watch it below.

Ahead of the imminent release of Sunroof’s Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1, the first collection of eight improvised modular pieces from founder of Mute Daniel Miller, and legendary producer, engineer and artist Gareth Jones, who have been friends and collaborators for four decades, the pair shared a new track called ‘1.2 – 30.5.19’. As with the previous single, ‘1.2 – 30.5.19’ also comes with an accompanying video with visual direction by Jeff Courtney. Take a look.

Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 is out on May 21st on the Parallel Series of Mute.

Photo: Diane Zillmer & Gareth Jones

Daniel Miller, founder of Mute, and Gareth Jones, legendary producer, engineer and artist, have been friends and collaborators for four decades. They have worked together on a plethora of projects, including Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again in 1982. Back then, after the day sessions would finish, the pair would carry on working on their own material. They continued this practice, and Sunroof came to life first as a remix project, reworking bands like Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp. Miller and Jones met before a György Ligeti concert at London’s Barbican in 2019 and spent a couple of hours improvising with modular systems, which they recorded and decided to finally make a record together. “We decided to get together to do a bunch of improvisations,” explained Gareth. “We said we’d work in a number of different physical spaces but always together, in the same room. We were keen to do shorter pieces because we were both very inspired by Chris Carter and Martin Gore’s electronic music projects, where the pieces were very concise and compact.”
Come May 21st, Sunroof’s debut album is finally materializing with the release of Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 on the Parallel Series of Mute. The album is a collection of eight improvised modular pieces which the two recorded as live performances in several studio spaces across London in the spring and summer of 2019. As for their approach to the sessions, they were set on differentiating an improvisation and a jam session as Miller explained:

“With modular systems, you can just go on and on forever and never actually complete anything. Sometimes that’s okay – part of the joy of a modular is that you can just keep going indefinitely. But with this we were keen to actually finish something, so setting that timeframe became a really important rule for us.”

An edit of opener  ‘1.1 – 7.5.19’ serves as the first enthralling taste from the upcoming Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1. It comes with an accompanying video with visual direction by Jeff Courtney.