Heather Leigh
The daughter of a coal miner, weaving a trail from West Virginia to Texas and now residing in Scotland, Heather Leigh furthers the vast unexplored reaches of pedal steel guitar. She’s performed and released music since the 1990s as a solo artist and with a wide range of uncompromising collaborators from Peter Brötzmann to Jandek and has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The daughter of a coal miner, weaving a trail from West Virginia to Texas and now residing in Scotland, Heather Leigh furthers the vast unexplored reaches of pedal steel guitar. She’s performed and released music since the 1990s as a solo artist and with a wide range of uncompromising collaborators from Peter Brötzmann to Jandek and has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Naked Nudes
Recorded at ADA in Peter Brötzmann’s hometown Wuppertal as part of his 80th birthday concerts, Naked Nudes brings together two of his most unusual collaborators, Heather Leigh (pedal steel guitar) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) for one of the most elegiac releases in his discography. The relationships between the players are tonally odd: woozy, mournful, almost baroque blues or even more chamber music in feel, the quality of the interplay is subtle and natural, like modern ballads. In the recordi…
Glory Days
**Edition of 500. Orange vinyl** Heather Leigh is a musical polymath in the truest sense of the word; primarily known as an influential practitioner of pedal steel guitar, her work is impossible to pigeonhole - all-over-the-place in the best way, from collaborations with Peter Brötzmann and Shackleton to a properly mind-bending duo of albums for Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ and Editions Mego - hers is a sound that’s both highly sensual and aesthetically aggressive, beautiful and fearless. …
Ears Are Filled With Wonder
Ears Are Filled With Wonder, the debut release from the duo of pedal steel player Heather Leigh and reedist Peter Brötzmann, blows the old adage about improvised music somehow not being best appreciated via the recordings to beautiful pieces. This is a music that demands re-visiting, that seems to alter, slightly, every time it is played, with new details emerging, new relationships of tone and style, new romance, even. Recorded during a mammoth stint in Kraków, Poland, where Brötzmann and…
South Moon Under (The Red Hook Concert)
**500 numbered copies, private edition** "Heather Leigh is originally from West Virginia but now lives in Scotland. She is a steel guitar player with an increasing reputation for furthering the unexplored reaches of pedal steel guitar. She combines a physical presence with a playing style which is as spontaneous as it is based on solid musicianship. She is known as a player who combines strength and sensitivity. She has received great reviews from The Wire Magazine, MOJO, Uncut, The Guardian, Th…
Sparrow Nights
CD version, with 4 extra tracks non available on the LP version. Sparrow Nights is the first studio album from the furious duo of pedal steel player Heather Leigh and saxophone legend Peter Brötzmann.
Their collaboration has quickly gained a well-earned reputation for
their cutting-edge music and frenetic but sensuous playing. Recorded and
mastered in Vienna by Martin Siewert. Features artwork by Brötzmann; LP version comes in a heavy, '60s style tip-on cover."There is complexity in simplicit…
Throne
LP version. On Throne, Heather Leigh takes her place as queen of pedal steel with a suite of heart-rending ballads cauterized with burning riffs. After the rawness of its precursor I Abused Animal (SOMA 023LP, 2015), Throne is a record of late night Americana and heavy femininity; intimate love songs smoked in sensuality. The songs on Throne are woozy, gorgeous and uncomfortable, smothered in thick layers of bass but lifted by multi-tracked vocals. These are rich song forms that stand in contras…
Sex Tape
Recording of Heather Leigh and Peter Brötzmann's great set at Unlimited Festival, Wels, 2016. Personnel: Heather Leigh - pedal steel guitar; Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone.
I Abused Animal
I Abused Animal is Heather Leigh's first solo album for Ideologic Organ, following solo albums on Kendra Steiner Editions, Golden Lab Records, Not Not Fun, Fag Tapes, Wish Image, Volcanic Tongue's label, and more. Renowned as a fearless free improviser, Leigh showcases her songwriting prowess on I Abused Animal, foregrounding her stunning voice and her innovations for the pedal steel guitar. Warmly recorded in a secret location in the English countryside, the album transports the power of her ca…
Jailhouse Rock
"It's been a while since Scorces sorceress, Jandek collaborator, and Volcanic Tongue branch manager Heather Leigh has ventured out on vinyl under her own name. And it may be a while longer, as Jailhouse Rock is in fact a wax reissue of a long OOP 2006 cassette classic on Michigan crud factory Fag Tapes. It was a fave of ours that year (and every year), so it feels extra celebratory to be able to offer up a freshly remastered (by Pete Swanson) LP edition of the album for global re-appreciation. S…