Kindred - A Conversation Between Two Pianos

Welcome back to my blog! It’s been a little while, and a lot has happened - not least the newest addition to our growing family, Thomas, who’s now four months old!

But back to the music… I’m so excited to share Kindred with you, out now on Moderna Records! It’s a new album made with my dear friend, the pianist Jacob David, and I thought I’d take you behind the scenes and share the story behind it.

How it started

I still remember the first time I heard Jacob’s music - it was his album Mursejler, and I’ve been a fan ever since. That title track never fails to amaze me: how one idea can carry through a whole piece and still feel completely fresh and new, depending on how it’s moved around, coloured and woven together. Pure genius.

We met over Instagram in 2021 and, as it turned out, Jacob liked my music too, which could only mean one thing… we should collaborate! It wasn’t something we rushed into - we calmly shared ideas until we eventually put out two (yes, two!) waltzes, Now and Then and Stundom (keep an ear out for Then and Now on the new album - a little nod to where it all began!). These singles marked the start of what’s become a long-standing collaboration.

Aside from the music, we’re really great friends, and it’s so nice to meet a fellow obsessive perfectionist who’s just as nuts as me!

Why an album?

We’d released plenty of music together over the years, but never a whole collection - it was a surprisingly late realisation of “why don’t we have an album?!” Once we landed on it, Kindred felt less like starting something new and more like the obvious next step, and one we didn’t want to rush.

How we work

We love the same things and tend to arrive at the same musical conclusions, but the way we get there couldn’t be more different. I’m quite methodical - I sometimes joke I’ve got a jazz-trained “bag of tricks” - whereas Jacob works purely on feel. It gets genuinely funny sometimes: Jacob will say a chord has this real longing to it, and I’ll go, “it’s just a maj7#11!” That push and pull is what makes it work.

Most of the album came together across the North Sea, through voice notes, video calls and a lot of improvising down the phone. The distance forces you to be patient, which oddly isn’t a bad thing - some of our favourite moments came from ideas one of us had almost forgotten about, rediscovered weeks later and finished in a completely different way.

Meeting in Copenhagen

We finally met in person in Copenhagen in May 2023, and one late night at Jacob’s studio we stumbled across a simple, sweet melody that stayed with us both. We only came back around to finishing it this year, and it became Jacob Meets Elliott - intimate, unplanned and quietly full of possibility.

The artwork

The cover started with a photo of the two of us, taken through a shop window. We’re there in the reflection, mixed up with the street outside - passing cars, the light, a few bits and bobs on the shelves - and we loved that we weren’t really the point of it. We didn’t want the artwork to copy the photo, just to hold on to that feeling of two people standing side by side while everything else carries on around them.

We asked Benjamin Abana, a brilliant Danish artist and a friend of Jacob’s, and knew straight away he was the right person. He used the photo as his reference, but his job was really to draw out the parts we loved - the reflections, the colours, the layers.

You can see more of Benjamin’s work on Instagram.

The tracklist

1. Unfold

2. Kindred

3. Evermore

4. Sway

5. Familiar

6. Then And Now

7. For When

8. Jacob Meets Elliott

9. Lumen

At its heart, Kindred is about connection - between two musicians, two places, and the experiences that shape us. I hope it finds a place in your quieter moments.

Kindred is out now - you can listen here.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

Elliott