Bristol-based lo-fi musician imagiro shares new album ‘unfold’
July 21, 2023 BY Jason Currell
Bristol-based multi-hyphenate August Pemberton (a.k.a. imagiro) has today shared his full-length debut album, unfold, through label Nettwerk.
Springing out of the fertile online beats scene, unfold is fully-fledged statement ripe with the sonic ingenuity of his early work but bolstered and elevated by emotional, vocal imbuements that reveal whole new dimensions to the artist.
Listen to unfold below:
https://imagiro.ffm.to/unfold
Imagiro is both a self-taught musician and producer and a highly educated and innovative software designer. His previous “beat tape” releases have been borne out of his natural inquisition and desire to explore new sonic vistas, and has placed him among a coterie of similarly like-minded music makers around the globe, whom he’s connected with through Bass Music Discord forums, social media DMs and downloads of his proprietary Imagiro Piano app. Drawing on the expertise and generosity of this disparate network of collaborators, Imagiro has already created a host of tracks that have eased their way past the million streams mark – but this is just the beginning.
unfold sits at the nexus of Imagiro’s abilities and collaborative spirit, illuminating a new path forward for the truly creative mind behind the music. The sonic basis of the album emerges from the unknown zone that Imagiro has been mining previously; taking organic sounds and carefully warping them into something that sits just outside the realm of familiarity. “That to me is where the interesting sounds are, the ones that you don’t understand fully,” he says. “That’s what gives them extra depth.”
Where unfold departs from Imagiro’s previous output is in the addition of his voice. It’s something he’s been wanting to do for years, having first appreciated The Beatles’ pinpoint harmonies as a child. More recently he’s been inspired by contemporary albums that bring vocals into technically ambitious sonic territories, such as Mr. Jukes’ God First, Mid-Air Thief’s Crumbling and Bon Iver’s 22, A Million, which he describes as “the best example of combining the digital and analog worlds”.
Watch the videos for the singles “joy thief”, “there, then”, and “i’ll put you back together”.
Tracklist:
1. joy thief ft. Weird Inside
2. rightinfrontofme
3. fire ft. Annie Elise
4. there, then, now ft. Lowswimmer
5. thinkinboutme ft. Somni
6. everything+ ft. quickly, quickly
7. i’ll put you back together ft. Rhoda
8. avalanche
9. where you want me ft. Clover
10. lost and found ft. Majent
11. passerby ft. Taipei
About imagiro
August Pemberton lived in New York as a child before he moved back to the UK at 7 years old. At university, he studied computer science and after graduating he moved to Bristol where he’s currently based. Pemberton grew up in a musical family and began playing the piano at a young age. While making software at university (he studied computer science), playing the piano meant a natural progression to using music software and producing his own music under the name “imagiro”.
Soon he became very well respected by fellow artists in the lo-fi music field (Blue Wednesday, Aso, Arbor, Tennyson, Ford) and has collaborated with other established lo-fi artists. In 2020 he sampled his family piano and created the plugin “Imagiro Piano” to virtually play his family piano in any DAW. The plugin is now the most used piano plugin in lo-fi music and has become a recognizable sound amongst top editorial lo-fi playlists. His followers are incredibly influential musicians within the folk/electronic space (Daedelus, Tennyson, quickly, quickly, Andrew Huang) and Pemberton’s work in both music and music tech is appreciated by these musicians.
