The Storyteller

ELECTRONIC MUSIC, AS A MEDIUM, OFTEN FACES CHALLENGES transitioning into an album format; consequently, many artists simply expand on their rhythmically focused tropes. For Leon Vynehall’s debut album for Ninja Tune, he took the opposite approach, writing a delicate history of his grandparents, and the result, Nothing Is Still, is a master class in storytelling and polish.

Borne of dusty Polaroids from his grandparents, Nothing Is Still

was composed simultaneously with the writing of a novella (with Max Sztyber) that expands the narrative taking place. The novella chronicles the journey Vynehall’s grandparents took to immigrate to New York in the 1960s. Stories of isolation, scarcity, hope and opportunity sprawl vicariously across both the novella and the album.

Significantly, one need not read the story in order to understand the stirring and intentioned music. “From the Sea / It Looms (Chapters I & II)” conjures images of a creaking ship approaching a new land; “Movements (Chapter III)” reimagines the minutiae of life in lush melancholy; and in “Envelopes (Chapter VI),” letters from far away are painted as nostalgic vignettes.

This is all accomplished with- out relying on Leon Vynehall’s conventional club maxims. His ever-emotive music is composed with airiness and precision, as opposed to crunch and drive — a tangible choice, driven by the subject matter and the significance that Vynehall places on the weight of putting out an album. “It would’ve been a disservice to just do dance floor numbers,” he says. Far from a disservice, what Vynehall has accomplished exceeds all expectations from an artist reared on house and techno. Nothing Is Still serves as a career milestone, where the artist’s future now rests comfortably as both a dancefloor marshal, and as an effective raconteur.