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Johnny’s debut album 'break your little heart' was made in toronto, canada in 2004. johnny wandered the streets and clubs of the city until he found a collection of fine underground musicians to perform on the record. the project was written and recorded within weeks before being taken back to Bedfordshire to be mixed, mastered, and released as the first album on Lost Toys Records. After its release, the johnny parry trio was formed to reinterpret the songs for live shows around the UK. The trio sees Johnny boom, growl and whisper over his piano accompanied by Ben Milway on drums and Dave Lynch on bass. the live performance is coupled with projections of short films made by Andy Holden, an artist who in the past few years has exhibited in frankfurt, berlin, amsterdam, vienna, toronto, zürich and london. the second album ‘songs without a purpose’ (2007) explores a different side of johnny craft. hundreds of pages of scrutinized manuscript were brought to the studio to be played by the trio and a small chamber orchestra. Influenced as much by ideas from soundtracks, (think Morricone, Nyman and Glass) as songwriters, (Cohen, Cave, Waits,) the record jump-cuts between between hushed melancholic whispering, and sweeping final-scene grandeur. The album featured in many lists for top ten records of 2007, with tracks regularly being played on Radio 3’s Late Junction. ‘The Little Prayers EP’, the first of Johnny’s records to be recorded at the Lost Toys Studio, is a stripped down set of sparse and haunting songs performed by the Trio only. The most recent album is the magnificent epic, ‘More Love and Death’, a sequel in parts to ‘Songs Without a Purpose’, but upping the stakes still further, with dense and dramatic arrangements for Johnny’s new fully formed Chamber Orchestra. It’s hard to do descriptive justice to the complexity, majesty and the scale of ambition of this record: its elaborate arrangements feel close in places to Arvo Part and in others Shostakovich, whilst the dark self-probing verse has it’s roots in the poetry of Plath at points, and the visions of William Blake at others. the Johnny Parry Chamber Orchestra have begun performing ‘more love and death’ live with a 14 piece line up and new film projections, with major concerts at the Union Chapel in London and the Concergebouw in Bruges. press: “As Parry has proved once agian with 'More Love And Death', his dark, beautiful, and complex world is a work of genius.” - (Daily Vault, 2009) “Parry's poems of morbid carnality and romance are framed by heavy velvet curtains of stylized theatrical gloom.” - (Uncut, 2009) “Parry's voice grabs you by the throat. This music drips right into your soul. ...mind-blowing.” - (DaMusic, 2007) “A piano led thing of beauty.” - (Timeout, 2007) video: website: www.johnnyparry.com |
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