So where did this all begin? Where did The Hillside Project come from?
I’ve been making music for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest and most intact childhood memories are musical ones: playing an ancient piano at my grandparents’ house; using the back of an armchair or any other available household object as an impromptu drum kit; somehow falling asleep aged 6 at my first rock concert (Sky at the Reading Hexagon, FYI) with my dad. Music was always everywhere. And became my hobby, my educational focus, my obsession, my passion and then, inevitably and without any alternative really being considered, my life and my work.
And my real interest always lay in composing, writing, creating - playing in bands was and is wonderful, performing publicly often debilitatingly nerve-wracking - but in conjuring music from the ether, I found that I could express myself in myriad previously-unknown ways, indulge my perfectionist streak by polishing and reworking mercilessly, squirrel myself away in whatever corner of the house became my studio until I was ready to emerge, blinking, back into the sunlight clutching whatever creation, idea, budding opus had appeared that day.
Soon my creative musical life split neatly into two strands: the music I created exclusively for myself, to satisfy some primal need I had to create on my own terms, in my own way, without reference to anyone or anything, no brief or restriction, music that would eventually morph into what could be called my ‘style’, a forum to experiment and learn and play and fail and succeed; and then the music that I would create for commercial or collaborative projects, initially for school or university assignments and then for commissions, for short films, for contemporary dance and physical theatre, for TV, for advertisements, corporate music and sound design for cars and banks and sweets.
I often had an uneasy relationship with the concept of sharing my music with the world (or even with those closest to me). The collaborative and commercial work would sail forth as part of whatever product I’d written for and I was often proud of that, sometimes the successful partnership with hugely inspirational directors or choreographers and association with a high-quality finished product leading to a greater sense of validity. But often the work that I created primarily for myself, which I was often more proud of and which presented my musical self in a more undiluted way, didn’t find a home or its way to a wider audience (or often, any audience at all). And this situation persisted through most of my creative life - much of my music-making became a personal process, not shared or publicised.
And then two things happened.
Firstly, a shift very naturally occurred in my thinking back in the summer of 2016. I was in the process of writing and demoing a couple of piano pieces that I came to really love. They slowly transformed into more complex pieces that seemed to demand being taken more seriously and I figured that I should record these ‘properly’, using a real piano and real drums rather than the sampled versions that I often used out of necessity or ease. And this made me think that this seriousness of approach should translate into actually, finally, properly finishing and then releasing these. The seed had been sown. I recorded piano parts on a beautiful Steinway Model C grand with the infinitely talented Grant Leslie at the studio helm. And then these recordings languished for a time whilst other writing projects and life itself took over.
Secondly, a relatively recent conversation with my incredibly inspirational and supportive partner, Jen, moved things along again. Spotify and the streaming revolution that it helped to usher in has undoubtedly changed the face of music-making, both in terms of the ease with which listeners can access almost limitless music instantly, and the similarly simple process with which musical artists can now publish and share their work with the world, bypassing the previously entrenched and challenging route of the traditional publisher/record company approach. Jen couldn’t understand why she couldn’t hear my music on Spotify when this was now so accessible, cheap and simple! And then suddenly there wasn’t a really good reason why I shouldn’t do this and finally pluck up the confidence to just… share stuff. The collection of piano pieces and songs that I’d started two years previously seemed like a good initial focus and, although other releases came first, these are finally nearly finished and will see the light of day later this year. (Incidentally, Jen also came up with The Hillside Project name, inspiration striking in the midst of a sublime Poppy Ackroyd concert we attended at the South Bank. Punning on the fact that this is my Side Project along with a nod to the fact that my studio is perched on the side of a hill, it just seemed to fit the brief perfectly).
And so that’s what this is. Me finally sharing my music. An inevitable veritable baring of the musical soul, but perhaps not quite that dramatic. New things, old things, collaborations, experiments, improvisations alongside carefully structured pieces, electronic and acoustic, songs and just music, a hundred different genres or no genre at all. Wherever and whatever and however the mood takes me. So please do listen, read, get in touch, let me know what you think, come back often and see what I get up to.
Josh
