Rival Consoles

Continuing on from his Odyssey EP released in 2013, Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles creates atmosphere and space whilst exploring waves of sound and rhythm, and the power of colour. With Sonne Ryan creates music to structure itself around a pulse, rather than the pulse being the defining point. “I’m often looking at art in exhibitions and I always think to myself ‘why the hell don’t I have this much colour in my work?’ The answer in part I think is down to synthesis. It is very difficult to create colour without it sounding plastic. Colour in music is both the note combinations and the actual timbre of the sounds. There are lots of instances of very colourful ambient sounds, which I took great care to create for each song, using various methods – from passing analogue synths through chains of effects to chopping up random sequences of recordings and forming tiny collages.” – Ryan Lee West Some might be surprised that London based electronic producer Ryan Lee West, the man behind Rival Consoles, shares a home with contemporary classical composers such as Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds and Peter Broderick. And yet they have a lot more in common than expected. Fascinated by sound from an early age, Ryan chose to dedicate his time to studying, experimenting with and producing sound graduating from De Montfort University in Leicester. West often composes early ideas on piano, violin and guitar, although the end result is much more electronic-laden. 2009 saw a split release between West and Ólafur’s techno project Kiasmos, which revealed their mutual appreciation for dance music. Ryan has also produced remixes for New York based composer Nico Muhly and UK producer Jon Hopkins.