An Introduction To Ela Orleans. (2019) NIGHT SCHOOL RECORDS. LP and CD 

Movies For Ears is a retrospective collection of songs by Ela Orleans, exploring 10 years of recordings, spanning 2001-2012. It was launched at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts on 11 April 2019. The record was featured extensively on BBC 6 Music, with Orleans interviewed by Tom Ravenscroft and tracks played on the Gideon Coe, Cillian Murphy, Amy Lamé, Jon Hillcock and 6 Music Recommends shows. It received feature coverage in Electronic Sound and The Skinny and positive reviews in The Wire, Electronic Sound and The Scotsman. It was named one of The Best Albums Of Winter 2019 by Bandcamp. 

“The songs here all play like deft, meticulously crafted facsimiles. Which is precisely what makes them so stunning… I discovered ‘Music For Ears’ in early February; I haven’t wanted to listen to anything else since.” – J. Edward Keyes – Bandcamp
 

For touring enquiries, please contact:  claire@cryptic.org.uk

PRESS RELEASE:

“With Ela’s music I feel emotional, engaged… I can’t help but feel she’s always looking for a sense of belonging and it seems to inform all the music that she makes. Glasgow must have more of that belonging feeling than most cities because she’s spent the most time here, an exotic bird in a rainy city she maybe finds a little bit of comfort in. It’s a pleasure to have her here, in this awful time to be living in Britain, her illuminations feel important and hopeful. A stubborn light; someone making great timeless music out of the humdrum of the everyday.” – Stephen Pastel  

“Movies For Ears” is a retrospective collection of works by Polish-born, Glasgow-based artist Ela Orleans which navigates almost two decades of songwriting in the heart of the global pop underground. This remastered collection casts an ear over what Orleans might call the ‘pop sensibility’ within her back catalogue. Released previously on a number of small DIY labels, Orleans’ music coincided with the explosion of auto-didactic musicians finding their voice in the age of the blogosphere, artists emboldened by the democratisation of music-making afforded by the internet. From the outset, Orleans’ childhood studying formal music mixed with cut-up techniques, sampling, sound-art and experimentation to create a distinctive signature cloaked in an innate melancholy and playfulness.
Fully remastered by James Plotkin, featuring extensive sleeve-notes and rare photos from Orleans’ archive, “Movies For Ears” presents an appraisal of the musician’s work, painting a portrait of an artist with an uncanny ability to evoke emotions and ghosts of memories in the listener. Each song pulls sunshine from its surroundings, moments of pleasure plucked from eulogies. On “Movies For Ears”, Ela Orleans lets us into a secret: the rare moments of joy to be found in the joins of the loop, the spaces between things, the spring after the winter are the moments that last after the day has faded.  

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