"a mix of spirituality and activism"
Design by Rhys Tivey is so sonically different that your emotional antennae raise immediately after you push play. The ambient tones like radio transmitting sounds, along with organic sounds of trumpets and an incredible drum and percussion bed serve as a sort of avant garde framework for Tivey to insert, piano downbeats and his exquisitely enticing vocal performance. It feels as much as performance art for the mind as a song because it will cast imagery in you head and when the melodic poetry and magical groove ends, it surprises you once more.
i feel an ember between you and me
between you and me now
i was unable to really hear
to really hear you
fog is a near constant in my climate
air lift light design, will our hearts be better this time
An artist and an artist as activist, Rhys Tivey is not only a gifted singer-songwriter and producer, but a multi-instrumentalist and lends trumpet, synths, piano, Wurlitzer and percussion to Design.
Amazing.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
Rhys Tivey grew up on a small horse farm in rural upstate NY to visual artists Hap Tivey and Liza Tivey. As a teenage trumpeter, he played jazz and orchestral music, performing in Carnegie Hall, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic with Albany ESYO. After graduating from NYU, he dove into developing his sound as a vocalist, songwriter, and producer, taking inspiration from earlier days of musical influence (an eclectic mix of Phil Collins, Jim Morrison, David Bowie, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Tribe Called Quest, and Miles Davis), while incorporating jazz and symphonic elements absorbed during his trumpet studies. As a yoga teacher, an ambassador to his grandmother's Elizabeth Taylor AIDS foundation, and as a proponent of fighting climate change and volunteering for Citizens Climate Lobby, a mix of spirituality and activism run intertwined to his life as a maker of music.
After several years of performing in LA and NYC and recording original songs with Mike Haldeman (Moses Sumney), Carter Lee (The Marias), Dillon Treacy, Jessie Bielenberg (Kandace Springs, Kiah Victoria), grammy nominated engineer Mike Tierney, and mastering engineer Alex DeTurk (D'Angelo, David Bowie), his first album debut will be an epic spring 2020 release. Much of the project was born from demos recorded in the few off hours working as a farm apprentice at Hawthorne Valley Farm, and completed at Mike Tierney's Shiny Things Studio in BedStuy Brooklyn, bridging rural and urban backdrops for it's songwriting and sonic essence.
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