JULIA KENT

After years spent performing and recording with other artists and groups, Canadian-born, New York City-based Julia Kent found her own voice with her solo debut, Delay, an exploration of the private emotional worlds that exist within the disjunctions and disorientations of travel, hailed for its “lovely, melancholy” compositions, full of “aching romanticism…rich melodicism, and detailed arrangements.” She toured to support it throughout Europe and North America, and subsequently released an EP, Last Day in July.

In Green and Grey, her following solo record, she continued to use looped and layered cello, electronics, and field recordings to explore the intersections between the human world and the natural world, the melding of the technological and the organic, the patterns and repetitions that exist in nature and are mirrored in human creations, and the complexity and fragility of our relationships with one another and with the world that surrounds us.

Julia Kent has composed a number of original film scores, and her music has been used as accompaniment to theatre and dance performances. She has toured throughout Europe and North America, including appearances at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, the Donau festival in Austria, Meltdown in London, and the Unsound festival in New York City.

Julia Kent's debut solo effort, Delay, is a CD of multi-tracked cello and found sounds. It was inspired by the transitory nature of airports, and by the private emotional worlds that we create amid the disorientations and disjunctions of travel. Delay was recorded over the course of a year (or so) in between touring. After so many years of playing with other people, Kent felt that it was time to do something entirely on her own. As a result, she is the sole composer/performer on all tracks. The title refers to the effect, to traveling, and to the fact that the album took so long to record. It also pays homage to Arthur Russell's World of Echo, a masterpiece of externalizing the intimate.