The London-based producer brings his new album Landscape From Memory to Melbourne Recital Centre for two nights at the end of January.
Landscape From Memory, the ninth studio album by English electronic musician Rival Consoles, began with a feeling a hollowness.
Ryan Lee West, the producer and multi-instrumentalist who’s been making music as Rival Consoles for nearly two decades, was overtaken by a feeling of creative burnout following the release of 2022’s atmospheric Now Is.
Rival Consoles
- Elisabeth Murdoch Hall @ Melbourne Recital Centre
- 30, 31 January
- Tickets here
Check out our gig guide here.
West, who grew up in Leicester but is now based in London, has been constantly working on music since he was a kid. But suddenly, he felt no inclination to produce.
“I started playing the guitar at age 12, and ever since then I have been obsessed with making music and thinking about the different ways music can be explored,” West says. “It was my whole life and so when that went away, it felt very extreme because music has always been the grounding force of my life, especially in very dark moments.”
Rather than force it, West took a year off producing. When he returned, he was faced with the challenge of rebooting his creativity. One of the strategies he used to reignite the spark was rummaging through old ideas and adapting them into new compositions.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of music sitting on hard drives. I often randomly open projects from different years, and there are moments that have a lot of merit,” West says.
“I find that when you work with producing ideas in electronic music, process can get in the way so much that when you listen back to an idea after time has passed, you can listen more to the idea as you have forgotten the process. So, it’s more neutral and you can more clearly understand what excites you about an idea.”
These randomly-opened projects formed the basis of Landscape From Memory, an emotionally vulnerable record that combines traditional instrumentation with electronic transmutation.
Rival Consoles’ music has occasionally been described as highbrow, a term used to distinguish it from dance-focused electronic music. But it’s never West’s intention to make music that primarily appeals to the intellect.
“I strive to make music that is emotional rather than intellectual,” he says. “I am thoughtful about what I include and frequently discard things that work but don’t quite feel right, and I do spend hundreds of hours exploring structure and variations of my ideas.”
He adds, “My work borrows a lot from dance music, but never really becomes dance music. I grew up absorbing music written by bands and so I think the structure of my music functions more like songwriting.”
Electronic music that’s produced with the club in mind often relies on sustained energy and gradual progression. But the tracks on Landscape From Memory are more concerned with disruption of energy and moments of hushed vulnerability.
“There is so much creativity in exploring different types of energy,” West says.
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Rival Consoles’ 2026 Australian tour will include two dates at Melbourne Recital Centre in late January. West has always used a range of technologies on his records, from DAWs and audio interfaces to reel-to-reel audio tape recording, analogue and digital synthesisers, and electric and acoustic guitars. His live setup is similarly multifaceted.
“I am using the Prophet ’08 into two comprehensive pedals: the Chroma Console multi-effect pedal and Evil Pet granular effect unit,” he says. “This allows me to constantly improvise parts and textures. I also have the OXI One sequencer driving the Strega synth for some more gigantic experimental drones.
“Everything is mixed live by me in Ableton, which I use very much like a traditional mixer: adjusting level, EQ and effects for many channels constantly, which allows me to sculpt the sound and be very playful from moment to moment.”
West employs these tools in service of an unpredictable live show that’s defined by its polarity.
“It constantly explores different extremes,” he says. “Soft and heavy, slow and fast, sparse and dense. I like music to explore a lot of sensations, and I love for it to be crude at times and then elegant at others. So, the set will have many turns that are surprising and hopefully exciting to those who witness it.”
Get your tickets to see Rival Consoles at Melbourne Recital Centre on 30 or 31 January here.
This article was made in partnership with Melbourne Recital Centre.
