EPK: Leo Chadburn, Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator (Album)

Artist: Leo Chadburn
Title: Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator
Release Date: 8th August 2025
Format: CD, Bandcamp and All Streaming Services (distributed by AWAL / The Orchard) / CD
Genre: Spoken Word / Drone / Electronic / Experimental / Minimal
Label: Library of Nothing

SLEEP IN THE SHADOW OF THE ALTERNATOR : Cover Art

STREAMING AUDIO (Bandcamp)

N.B. for press download codes, links to .ZIP files of album audio, or physical review copies, please contact

The album is also available on Bandcamp, and across all streaming services.

PRESS RELEASE

A radiophonic lullaby for a half-forgotten place and time, Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator comprises close-miked spoken word, framed by slowly revolving harmonies, intense drones that evoke the hum of electricity, enigmatic field recordings, shimmering bells and the distant rumble of metal percussion.

“The mines were still operational when I was a child. Coal gave its name to the town. The whole area was defined by heavy industry: quarries and monumental factories. Yet, we were also surrounded by beautiful woodland, windswept grassland and outcrops of ancient rock. Eventually, the industrial economy was extinguished. The warehouses were demolished. The pits reverted to nature. 40 years later, I recall my memories of the place as if they were a dream.”—Leo Chadburn

The album unfolds across four tracks, reflecting the changing seasons. Its labyrinthine narrative takes imagery of the landscape as a starting point to explore ideas of absence, return, melancholy and magic, culminating in a science-fiction vision of a post-human England, one thousand years in the future.

File alongside: Eliane Radigue, Robert Ashley, Delia Derbyshire, Derek Jarman.

Click here for a .PDF copy of the CD liner notes - contains full texts (lyrics/libretto) and album credits.

Click here for a hi-res image of the album cover (3000px).

ALBUM CREDITS

The recording of Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator was supported by Help Musicians.

BIOGRAPHY

Leo Chadburn is a London-based composer whose unpredictable work includes solo performances that merge his voice with electronic music, music for ensembles, and scores for film and installation art. It has been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, 3 and 6 Music.

Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is his eighth solo album, following 2021's Slower / Talker and 2024's The Primordial Pieces, both of which were named in Bandcamp Daily's top ten contemporary classical releases in their respective years and received critical acclaim.

Leo was known previously by the pseudonym Simon Bookish and released a sequence of subversive “avant-pop” albums, alongside numerous remixes for artists including Owen Pallett, Grizzly Bear and Serafina Steer.

Much of Leo's work is preoccupied with the musicality and theatricality of speaking voices, utilising a wide range of unconventional text sources, such as technical data and maps, lists of animal species and place names, messages taken from picture postcards, and stream of consciousness writing that resembles a kind of "musical science fiction".

He has been nominated for three Ivor Novello Awards and won a British Composer Award for his piece Freezywater, written for the group Apartment House. Other classical ensembles he was worked with include The Britten Sinfonia, The Marian Consort, Phaedra Ensemble and Quatour Bozzini.

His collaborative work with visual artists includes projects with Cerith Wyn Evans (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Marianna Simnett (Serpentine Gallery), Jennet Thomas (Matt's Gallery) and Jasleen Kaur (V&A).

For more information, full list of works and audio of previous work, please visit: www.leochadburn.com

PRESS QUOTES

"...Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is a perfectly realised work, and visionary triumph."
—Tom Bolton, The Quietus Albums of the Year 2025

"...Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is an important document, a deeply respectful set of audio postcards moving between the past and the future, assuming considerable emotional weight..."
—Ben Hogwood, musicOMH's Album of the Week

"...The record Chadburn has been working towards for years, gloriously realised..."
—Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Purposeful Listening's Albums of the Year

"...Magical realism meets spoken-word memoir on this riveting new album..."
—Alan Pedder, The Needle Drop

"...An evocative, sonically engaging and thought-provoking work..."
—Julian Cowley, The Wire

CATALOGUE

Previous releases on Library of Nothing Records: