Ryan Vail is a musician and composer with vision and ideas. The Derry-born artist draws his inspiration from the worlds of electronic and modern classical music, bringing them together with unique instrumentation and an emphasis on the immediacy of live performance above all.
In his 2015 collaborative album with songwriter Ciaran Lavery, ‘Sea
Legs’, he created miniature stories, set against the vast Atlantic roar.
The album was nominated for the Northern Ireland Music Prize in 2015. Ryan’s debut album ‘For Every Silence’, released in 2016, was another impressive swerve and earned him his second Northern Ireland Music Prize nomination.
‘Distorted Shadows', set for release in April 2018, is Ryan’s first record
as a full-time, committed musician. The record is a call for art, soul and self-belief during difficult times. The music is informed by generations of electronic pioneers but it also reveals an interest in classical forms. There is poetry and raw confession. ‘Distorted Shadows’ is what it sounds like to be a creative person in 2018, surrounded by dread and chaos but determined to find meaning beyond it.
In using all of these different collaborators and sample sources, and
combining them with his own acoustic and electronic compositions and recordings – always recorded live in as few takes as possible – Ryan Vail has achieved something very special, telling a story through his music.