[Cover photo credit to Paul Heartfield]

Will Gregory Moog Ensemble have released their debut album, Heat Ray: The Archimedes Project, viat MUTE, an album that draws on the work of Archimedes, the Greek mathematician who lived and worked in the third century BC.

The album, recorded by the Moog Ensemble on analogue synthesizers, alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, is out now digitally and will be released on vinyl and CD on June 28th, 2024.

The album release will be accompanied by an exclusive In Conversation between Will Gregory and Mute’s founder, Daniel Miller, at Rough Trade West on Thursday, June 20th. A series of live dates will follow in the autumn starting with the Hidden Notes festival in Stroud before three performances with the Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican, London Basingstoke and in Saffron Walden.

The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, which at times, comprises up to fourteen players, was formed by Ivor Novello-winning musician, Producer and co-creator of Goldfrapp, Will Gregory. Although they have been performing together since 2005, it took Archimedes to bring the ensemble together record.

The album’s inspiration occurred during the pandemic lockdowns when Will Gregory started digging into the mathematician’s life, after watching lectures online.

He comments:

I became a bit of a YouTube fiend. Attending all these lectures I would never normally go to on subjects I had no business to be interested in. Scratch any of these maths gurus and it turned out Archimedes was their favorite mathematician. I wanted to find out why.

The ensemble’s members have worked with the likes of Florence & the Machine and Dua Lipa, and Portishead’s Adrian Utley, a longtime collaborator of Will Gregory’s, who plays on the album and Produced it.

Will Gregory adds about the inspiration behind the project:

I mean, the knowledge that these people had. And also, the idea that it only takes one person to absolutely leap the whole of civilisation forward, take so many steps – it’s astonishing. And to think that libraries were burned, and so much knowledge was lost for millennia. It reminds us what we have to hold onto.

LIVE DATES:

9/21/2024 – 9/22/2024 – Hidden Notes Festival, Stroud
10/8/2024 – London, UK – The Barbican
10/9/2024 – Basingstoke, UK – The Anvil
1011/2024 – Saffron Walden, UK – Saffron Hall