It was late March in Paris when Peter Broderick was standing by the stage selling his music after an afternoon performance at an arts center. This is when Laura Arkana met Peter Broderick for the first time.
They became fast friends, strolling through the streets of Paris sharing stories and later, passing a guitar back and forth, sharing songs. Broderick recounted: " I was blown away by her songs. She sings in Dutch, these beautifully crafted haunting melodies, over the most steady and gorgeously fingerpicked guitar. I was in love with the music, but she was so shy about it, saying she'd hardly played the songs for anyone and had never recorded anything before."
A fortnight later, Arkana flew to Berlin. They rode bikes, ate and cooked amazing food, watched movies, and in a very casual way, recorded eight of Arkana's songs, six with guitar and voice, two for solo piano. Later, Broderick added his touch: "Since she left i have fallen in love with the songs more and more, listening to them on repeat all day and working on different arrangements with instruments around the house." This is when Laura Arkana met Peter Broderick for the second time. In music.
Shortly thereafter Nils Frahm mixed the album, and HUSH enthusiastically agreed to release it.
The recordings are warm and unfussy. For her part, Arkana paints specific details into her song-vignettes and sings with a conversational lilt. Her finger-picking-clean and anchored-gives rhythmic flight to a sophisticated melodic sensibility. It were as if she arrived fully formed.
For his part, Broderick combines a wealth of experience with his signature restraint and sensitivity, letting the songs breathe while enhancing their textural depth and dynamics with stringed instruments, vocals, and percussion. With a discography that contains over a dozen solo titles, half a dozen collaborative titles, and appearances on well over sixty other recordings within in a time frame of five years, Broderick has demonstrated he is in a class of his own as a musician, composer, and producer. Further, any record label would do well to add him to A&R staff, having established a canny ability for attracting and spotting musical talent. From his early work as a duo with folk icon Justin Ringle of Horse Feathers, to championing neoclassical uber pianist Nils Frahm (after meeting him in much the same way as Arkana a couple years ago) Broderick has proved to have something of a golden ear.
With Laura Arkana met Peter Broderick (the word "met" here fulfills an international double entendre which translates to "with" in Dutch) listeners are delighted to discover song-scape like so many sprouting vines and stems intertwining with the relentlessness of Springtime in Paris, in Berlin, in where you are now.
