Name: Peter Chilvers
Nationality: British
Occupation: Musician, software designer
Current Release: Peter Chilvers's new album Dust 4 is out via Curious.
Hometown Recommendations: I live in Ely, one of the UK’s smallest cities, with one of its largest Cathedrals. Ely is a small, clay island in the middle of a vast area of flat fenland. The cathedral is a stunning work of architecture, and the views from the towers go on for miles. It can be seen from a long distance away, and is sometimes known as The Ship of the Fens for the way it rises from the landscape.
When I began filming an interview about the Dust series with Dion Johnson, he filmed some stunning drone footage of the landscape to add atmosphere. That took over - it’s more photogenic than I am! - and we ended up with an hour long video that became a love letter to the fens. The cathedral kept appearing as reassuring presence in the background.
Thins I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: I have a fascination for albums that can be a touchstone for one person and yet seem little known to others. The perfect example for me is Robin Holcomb’s self-titled first album. I was given a copy of it back in 1990, and it’s lived in my head ever since. Superficially, it’s singer-songwriter country album, but it’s dominated by her beautiful piano playing, and has a peculiarly distinctive mix of stark lyrics, distinctive chord voicing and her exquisitely subtle piano playing.
The album also has an impressive cast of contemporary jazz musicians, including Bill Frisell on sparkling form. I was always puzzled about how that lineup came about, until a few years later when I saw the New York Composers Orchestra perform in London. She was conducting several of her own polytonal compositions, and I realised that she stretched across several genres, and was clearly well respected within them.
There’s a moment from that concert that I’ve never forgotten. In the middle of one piece, she stopped conducting, quietly walked over to a grand piano, played about 32 bars of the most dazzling piano I’ve ever heard, then calmly returned to conducting. I’m not sure I feel qualified to give a whole talk on the subject … could you interview her next?

If you enjoyed this Peter Chilvers interview and would like to know more about his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and bandcamp.

For a deeper dive, we recommend our conversations with two of his collaborators in our Tim Bowness interview and our Brian Eno interview.



Are there examples of minimalism in music – and outside of music - that impressed you early on?

In the late eighties, I saw a TV documentary about composers blending mathematics and music, which ticked a lot of boxes for my geeky teenage self.

It was the first time I ever heard Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, and it made a huge impression on me.



I’d never heard anything like it, it locked into my brain in a way nothing else ever has. That’s never gone away,

I’m listening to it now as I type.

Do you tend to find that, as many claim, “less is more?” Are the notes you don't play really as important as the ones you do play?

My first job working with Brian Eno, back in 2006 was to help him create a generative soundtrack to the computer game Spore.

I remember one of the first pieces we looked at, it had just a continuous drone playing on two notes, and a piano-ish synth that would play a two or three note melody very occasionally. Hardly anything there, but it was such a compelling space to inhabit.

I completely revised my view of composition from that point, and realised how much weight sound design carries.

Were you ever interested in minimalism as a style – from the Philip-Glass-variety to solo instrumental work to minimal techno? If so, tell me a bit about your interest in this.

I don’t know if it was a conscious influence, but I found myself early on incorporating repeating patterns in my writing and improvisations. I tended to borrow the style more than the ideas, and would incorporate them into arrangements.

It was a shared influence for myself and vocalist Tim Bowness, with whom I’ve been collaborating for over thirty years.



As I became more immersed in working with Brian Eno on generative music, I’ve become far more involved with creating music that applies rules and randomness, to grow music as if from seeds - that has far more crossover with minimalism.

That particularly applied to his 2017 album Reflection - he created it in the studio using a collection of randomising tools I’d made, then I reverse engineered that into an app version, which could play endlessly, always changing.



Do you feel as though making music is a process of adding elements until it is done – or one where you chisel away pieces from something that is already there?

I try not to play too many notes in the first place, and then think very hard about whether any additions could detract from the space that’s there.

I often find with improvised pieces that some subtle sculpting is needed afterwards - chipping away at the odd distracting note here and there, and occasionally snipping out a few minutes of longer pieces that might have overcooked an idea.              



Many artists are becoming more minimalist in their music as the years go on, focusing on the “essence.” How is that for yourself and how would you describe your development in this regard?

I was never a very flashy pianist, but I’ve found myself more drawn to sound, and giving room to listen the sound an individual notes make.

I love the sustain pedal on the piano, and there’s great power in just letting a few notes ring out and resonate with each other. I’m very interested in effects that behave in a similar way, bringing a lot of life to a single note.

What were some of the starting points for your most recent release?

There’s a piece called “Gathering Dust,” which was the first track recorded for the album.

I’ve developed a set of software processes that work with my keyboard in real-time, taking different notes, chords and phrases I play in realtime, and directing them to different instruments, often altering them on the way. Some become loops, some get changed, some become melody lines, some spread out over several instruments. It’s a way of orchestrating live.



Curious Music asked Dion Johnson to shoot a short film of me explaining how I worked - we decided to make the entire soundtrack of the film in a single take - it’s not obvious, but the whole thing is a live performance - then we recorded a second take of me talking over the piece I’d just played.

It’s a very enjoyable, if complicated, way to work.

Do you like to set yourself limitations? If so, which were some of those limitations for the new pieces?

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when improvising, and fall into comfortable and familiar keys. C minor fits very nicely under the fingers for some reason.

So I’ve written a little piece of software that will pick a random key and mode for me, then I try and play in that. It’s a simple way to push myself out of my comfort zone.

For the piece “River meets the Ice”, I turned myself into a very constrained piano trio. Each “performer” was given 2-4 notes, and just repeated those, with plenty of space. Every few minutes, I’d alter the notes selection, but it was interesting hearing the phrases drift around each other and form something oddly more complex than the inputs.



Of course, the fun in creating rules is breaking them, and I’d occasionally embellish the phrases. Then I overdubbed some upright bass, electric piano and other sounds. I’m particularly proud of this piece - it feels to me like a live improvising ensemble, and I hope has echoes of the early ECM recordings I love.

Would you say that you approach your creative tools with a minimalist mindset? Or do you need a wide choice of instruments and tools to make music?

I’ve only recently reconnected with playing solo live, and one of the main factors has been discovering a good way of working with MainStage, Logic Pro’s underrated live spinoff.

I like turning up to gigs with a box of toys ; familiar and expressive instruments and effects I can pick up on whim. Everything is controlled through a set of dials and faders, and I don’t touch the computer at all.

I used that approach for much of Dust 4. After filming “Gathering Dust,” Curious Music encouraged Dion Johnson to shoot more drone footage of the area I live in. We ended up with an hour long video which I watched while improvising on MainStage. I then chopped those improvisations up constructed a more detailed soundtrack.

What were some of the most important pieces of gear or instruments for Dust 4?

The other technology that’s excited me is Dolby Atmos. Music like this - which is closer to a richly textured landscape than a composition - suits Atmos incredibly well.

Generally speaking, I hate mixing, but positioning sounds in the 3D around me to make an immersive soundtrack is an absolute joy.

With so much incredible music instantly available, are you finding that you want to take it all in – or that you need to be more selective? How do you pick the music you really want to invest in?

One of the ironies of working with music is that it’s rarely possible to listen to other music when working. In my distant past as a database programmer, I could listen to anything I liked, but I now find most music too distracting.

I’ve become very selective, and find myself mainly listening to work by Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins, Tim Hecker or (because I try to compose music to solve this problem), my own.

Would you say that minimalism extends into other parts of your life as well?

Both I and my wife wish it did! Sadly, my studio is a completely cluttered and chaotic mess, and I tend to preserve minimalism for the virtual space in which I work.  I only ever have one window visible at a time, expanded to fill the screen.

I have a much treasured Vision Pro, which allows me to view the Mac’s screen as if it was a huge cinema screen floating in the middle of Yosemite. I worked on Dust 4 that way, fully immersed in the video and the music.