Dr Leo Chadburn
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leochadburn.bsky.social
Dr Leo Chadburn
@leochadburn.bsky.social
1.5K followers 410 following 97 posts
Composer, performer, writer. FKA Simon Bookish. 🏳️‍🌈

www.leochadburn.com
leochadburn.bandcamp.com
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leochadburn.bsky.social
Wonderful and perceptive writing about "Sleep in the Shadow..." from Tim Rutherford-Johnson here, touching on place, Englishness and Russell Hoban... Thank you! johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/t...
Voice, body, language, place: these have long been the central preoccupations – basic materials, really – of Leo Chadburn’s work, from his early releases as his avant-pop alter-ego Simon Bookish (‘Portrait of the Artist as a Fountain’) to the stream of recent releases every year or two on his own Library of Nothing Records label: The Subject/The Object, Slower/Talker, The Primordial Pieces. For my money, his latest album, Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is his best yet, and the one to which so much of what he has made before seems to have been leaning.
October 16, 2025 at 3:31 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Thanks to The Wire (500th issue published this week!) for these words about my new album:
Lists can be poetic as well as functional. Naming in that direct way conveys a sense of concreteness. Leo Chadburn's "Magic Flora Of The East Midlands", the second of four tracks, starts with a spoken catalogue of plants, minimally glossed with healing or magical qualities traditionally attributed to each, while Latin botanical names are intoned by a monastic voice. This curiously engrossing piece also incorporates a list of traditional occupations - wheelwright, ostler, blacksmith, and so on. Words can generate extensive webs of association, and through time they acquire a patina of accrued meaning. Through texts which engage with landscape, regional history, perception and personal recollection, Chadburn invites us to experience the chemistry of language, its precipitation of imagery, embellished with field recordings and finely judged instrumental and electronic enhancements. An evocative, sonically engaging and thought-provoking work.
September 3, 2025 at 12:35 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
It's #BandcampFriday, which means today is an ideal day to pre-order 'Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator', (out next Friday, 8th). As ever, your support for my work is massively appreciated; album sales enable me to keep on releasing music. Thank you! X leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/sleep-...
Cover of the CD version of Leo Chadburn, 'Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator': two spheres of steel float in a black void, one glows red, green, blue. Inner sleeve of the CD version of Leo Chadburn, 'Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator'.
August 1, 2025 at 8:40 AM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Thanks to Elizabeth Alker for previewing my new album on BBC Radio 3's 'Unclassified' last night! "..the narrative just keeps you gripped all the way through, and the electronics carry you along beautifully...” 🙌 Listen again here (album preview is 4:15 into the show): www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
July 28, 2025 at 9:16 AM
leochadburn.bsky.social
I’m excited to announce my new album, ‘Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator’, which comes out on Friday 8th August. This album has been a long time in the making: it's dear to my heart. I really hope it resonates with you too. Info and pre-orders here: leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/sleep-...
Leo Chadburn, "Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator" album artwork. Two iron spheres float in a black void. As they touch, one sphere glows red, green and blue.
July 21, 2025 at 9:07 AM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Also... the new album is very, very nearly finished...
Screenshot of a Mac Finder window, showing a folder "MASTERS", containing three sub-folders: "16bit", "24bit", "DDP".
June 26, 2025 at 10:32 AM
leochadburn.bsky.social
5 years ago today I released my album The Subject / The Object: two 20-minute tracks: a sprawling monologue and an amorphous drone choir. It’s an intense one, but I’d love you to hear it. There's about a dozen tapes left, if you’d like to buy a physical copy:
leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/the-su...
Album artwork for Leo Chadburn's "The Subject / The Object": a square piece of machinery, made of grey metal and mirrors, with a single on/off switch (actually a folded overhead projector) against a pink background.
June 26, 2025 at 10:30 AM
leochadburn.bsky.social
I'm working hard finishing a new album. A dreamlike monologue with some delicate music. Quite personal, so I'm slighty afriad of putting it out into the world, but also excited for you to hear it later this Summer. Tam tam features heavily on one track. Had to take my noisy boots off in the studio.
Tam tam on a stand in the studio, with XY microphones and boots abandoned in front of it.
June 12, 2025 at 2:13 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Nice to see my name among the credits on the new Pulp album (released today), alongside a whole load of brilliant friends and amazing musicians. Delighted to be even a tiny part to this.
June 6, 2025 at 2:22 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Surprised and flattered that an old tweet of mine is quoted in Ian Penman's new book on Erik Satie ("Three Piece Suite" on Fitzcarraldo Editions)! Also it's my only remaining tweet, since I've deleted and abandoned that awful website now.
Quoted Tweet: "Somehow, Satie wrote 'Uspud', a 30-minute score that sounds like mediaeval Morton Feldman, or some kind of gothic minimalism, in 1892. It's extraordinary."
May 7, 2025 at 2:51 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
View from the vocal booth: Currently finishing making a new album. If you don't own my previous album(s), today ( #BandcampFriday ) is an ideal day to buy one. Everything goes towards funding the next one, on my tiny little DIY record label. Hugely grateful for the support: leochadburn.bandcamp.com
Acoustic panels mounted on keyboard stands, an ad hoc vocal booth.
May 2, 2025 at 10:18 AM
leochadburn.bsky.social
...He yelps. He squawks. He declaims, in a voice made of dog roses and manuka honey and tar and plums and pebbles..."

No photographs of the yellow jumpsuit exist, but here's the "sex wellies" in action (2004):
Me performing in 2004 on a light-up dancefloor in Kings Cross (?). Outfit: Black and white polka dot top / white safety boots.
April 7, 2025 at 11:24 AM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Here's an excerpt from Jeff Nuttall's "Poem" (1969)
Disconnected from my cerebral control — 0070 hrs. drifting in galactic infra-red compulsions. Auto-pregnancy a danger—close resemblance to terrestrial hernia in the first stage. Disconnected Self taps Existential Grit: “Recordings on the Godboard knock up nil. Are you receiving me?” Touch to Stratosphere: “For Christ’s sake don’t cry hernia in the disconnected self. Cerebral control a danger in the early grit.”
March 6, 2025 at 2:48 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
I have on occasion bought a book based on how handsome the cover is, such as this one (I was also intrigued by the idea of 'science fiction verse'). Unfortunately, it contains what I believe to be the worst poetry ever written.
The cover of 'holding your eight hands: an anthology of science fiction verse', ed. Edward Lucie-Smith. A graphic tangle of fuchsia and white lines intersecting in concentric circles.
March 6, 2025 at 2:39 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
We're putting on this gig on Friday (21st Feb) with Weston Olencki and Laura Cocks (launching their album FATHM), two excellent experimental musicians from the USA who I am sure some of you know. Please come to this gig! Sign up here: www.city.ac.uk/news-and-eve...
Flautist Laura Cocks
February 18, 2025 at 8:19 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Nostalgia! I released this 20 years ago: METAL HORSE was part of Tomlab Records' "Alphabet" series of thirty 7" singles (one for each letter of the German alphabet). In case you'd like to hear this lo-fi, anxious, synth pop curiosity again, it's on Bandcamp: leochadburn.bandcamp.com/album/metal-...
The sleeve of the Simon Bookish 7" single 'Metal Horse' - vivid rainbow stripes.
February 13, 2025 at 4:48 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Russell Hoban's centenary is today. Here's the "sexy glockenspiel" passages from his 1974 novel Kleinzeit. Like everything else he wrote, it's a book that's uniquely funny, deeply weird, and completely unsettling. #Hoban100
A glockenspiel came to him. How to you do, said Kleinzeit. Don’t be coy, said the glockenspiel. It’s me you’re looking for. £48.50. I’m the real thing, same kind they use in the London Symphony Orchestra. I don’t know, said Kleinzeit. All right, said the glockenspiel. £35 without the case. Plain cardboard box. Still the same instrument. Expensive case, said Kleinzeit. Professional, said the glockenspiel. Distinctive. How many truncated-triangle-shaped black case do you see? People think what is it. Not a dulcimer, not a zither, nothing a machine-gun. Meet girls. They’ll be dying to know what kind of instrument you’ve got. How about a little foreplay, said the glockenspiel. Kleinzeit made foreplay with the beater. Nice, said the glockenspiel, Do that some more. Nice. Kleinzeit did it some more, wrote notes as he found tunes. After a time he played with both beaters. Soft silver sounds hung quivering over the bathtub. Nice, said the glockenspiel, So nice. Aaaah!
February 4, 2025 at 12:32 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
"Iconic", the now most meaningless word in the English language, here being used to describe a venue that isn't even open yet. So iconically iconic.
February 3, 2025 at 9:09 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Sorry to hear Marianne Faithfull is no longer with us. 'Broken English' is a unique record - ice cold production, but that VOICE, full of invective, fire, heartbreak, experience. No one else ever sounded like that. Her version of "Ballad of Lucy Jordan" is almost too much to bear: despair & dignity.
January 30, 2025 at 8:09 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
Although it's 10th January, I'm heartened to see my favourite local Christmas display is still up. So much festive spirit.
House front in London E10, covered in fairy lights and tinsel, which is dominated by a plethora of warning signs: "do not touch", "children keep out", "warning, 24 hour video surveillance".
January 10, 2025 at 4:00 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
December 2024: Invited by the Elysian Collective to record some choral vocals for one of my favourite bands. Wow.
In the studio with Elysian Collective choir.
December 31, 2024 at 12:30 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
November 2024: Nominated for, but didn't win an Ivors Award, but had a fun night anyway...
Ivors Award nomination. Leo and Bishi, glamourous people at the ceremony.
December 31, 2024 at 12:29 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
October 2024: Live premiere of my piece "De La Salle (Violins)" at LSO St Lukes, 25 years after it was written!..
Violins in rehearsal at LSO St Lukes, London.
December 31, 2024 at 12:28 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
August 2024: Released an album. Some very nice reviews, and some touching responses. Thanks a million to everyone who listened...
Album artwork for The Primordial Pieces: elemental silicon floats in mid air above a placid sea.
December 31, 2024 at 12:28 PM
leochadburn.bsky.social
July 2024: Invited to lead a "masterclass" at Trinity Laban for young composers. Inspiring to hear such engaged and imaginative work from everyone. Really good...
December 31, 2024 at 12:27 PM