Adventurer. Storyteller. Artisan. Collector. And above all, Writer. Cosmo Sheldrake is all that. And more! A virtuoso one-man orchestra, master of an indecent number of instruments, the young Brit crafts magical and genre-defying little symphonies. These songs evoke Beirut's fanfare (a thing we often find ourselves thinking about) as much as they do repetitive minimalist music, world music, the baroque pop of the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society and the late sixties, the iconoclast Moondog and countless other sounds. These are sounds that Cosmo Sheldrake merrily collects from across the globe, with his little tape recorder in hand. But the power of The Much Much How How And I lies in its refusal to wallow in experimental self-indulgence. On the contrary! Songs, real ones, with a beginning, middle and end – plus a chorus and a melody – remain his holy grail.
But the power of The Much Much How How And I lies in its refusal to wallow in experimental self-indulgence. On the contrary! Songs, real ones, with a beginning, middle and end – plus a chorus and a melody – remain his holy grail. His album is touching and beautiful because it was conceived with this unique goal in mind. With electro producer Matthew Herbert at the console, himself no stranger to bizarre collages, The Much Much How How And I has all the fertile imagination of a Lewis Carroll story, and all the colours of the rainbow. This has to be the most Cosmo-politan Qobuzissime yet!
We met him in Paris where he talked about his album, his way of working and his relationship to the recording of all possible and imaginable sounds. As a bonus, Cosmo Sheldrake offers Qobuz an exclusive session of two tracks from The Much Much How How And I: Come Along and Pliocene.
Cosmo Sheldrake : Qobuz interview
QobuzCosmo Sheldrake - Come Along - Qobuz Session
QobuzCosmo Sheldrake - Pliocene - Qobuz Session
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