ashley paul: heat source

Ashley Paul's Heat Source was recorded during a challenging year of transience between New York and London. During this year of impermanence Paul performed regularly and the effects of frequent performance and traveling can be heard in the intentionally pared-back emptiness of Heat Source, making it an emotionally challenging and fascinatingly personal listening experience. Heat Source finds Ashley Paul working using her brilliant ears to find a zen like balance between her voice and a sparse arrangement of staccato instrumentation leaving as much open space on one song as most people would create in a lifetime. This open space isn't empty, however, but it's up to you to fill in the meaning. Heat Source is an emotionally challenging and fascinatingly personal listening experience that creates a powerful pace. Ashley Paul is a performer and composer based in Brooklyn, New York. She uses an array of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, guitar, bells and percussion, mixing disparate elements to create a colorful palate of sound that works its way into her intuitive songs; free-forming, introverted melodies. This blend manifests beautiful and simple musical forms against acoustic experimentation. Her solo albums have received high praise, being chosen in Wire Magazine's "Top 50 Releases of 2013, Pitchfork's "Best Experimental sounds of 2013," first on Byron Coley and Thurston Moore's "Tongue Top Ten" in Arthur Magazine and included on NPR's All Songs Considered "Best of 2010." She has been interviewed or featured in Wire Magazine, BOMB, Gonzo (circus), Dummy, The Quietus, Ad Hoc, Spex, The Sound Projector and Foxy Digitalis. Ashley has performed or recorded with Phill Niblock, Rashad Becker, Nik Colk Void, Loren Connors, Aki Onda, C. Spencer Yeh, Anthony Coleman, Joe Maneri, Joe Morris, Seijiro Murayama, Greg Kelley, Bill Nace and Eli Keszler, appearing on such labels as PAN, ESP-DISK' and Tzadik. She received a Masters of Music from New England Conservatory in 2007.