Michael Hamilton is a composer who is just as capable of tugging on your heart strings as bursting your ear drums. In his work you’ll hear everything from symphony orchestras, to retro synthesizers, to the 8-string guitars that linger from his days as a death metal guitarist. In addition to his work as a solo artist, Michael is also known for his work on video game and film soundtracks and, alongside collaborator, Ross Cairns, is also a prolific techno producer whose tracks have been released by record labels and heard on dancefloors from around the globe.
When he’s not composing, Michael works as a session musician, performing with various internationally renowned artists, and can be found onstage as the bassist of Progressive Music Award winning post-rock band, Midas Fall.
A Language Forever is a collection of electronic, beats-driven tracks inspired by UK Bass and Electronica producers such as Burial, Jamie XX, Asa and fellow Monotreme labelmate, Sorrow. As with each of his releases, the aim was to break new ground while borrowing from and building upon his previous work.
A Language Forever takes many of the characteristics of his soundtrack work, as well as his work with Midas Fall, and relocates it to more dancey, experimental realms where Dubstep, Glitch and IDM collide. These compositions marry fractured breakbeat samples with emotive, cinematic chord progressions; crunchy drum machine loops with intimate piano melodies; deep, gritty reese basses with mournful string passages - all atop a textured backdrop of vinyl crackle, foley recordings and pitch-shifted vocals. It's the kind of album that can provide an apt soundtrack to both the climax of a Saturday night, and the chilled out ambience of a Sunday morning.
Remixes are provided by friends and fellow Glasgow-based producers farfromnorth, Ross Somerville, and Innblásin, as well as frequent collaborator and the album’s mixing/mastering engineer, Ross Cairns.
In keeping with his long-standing DIY ethic, like each of Michael’s previous releases, A Language Forever was written and recorded in his living room in Glasgow, Scotland, with Michael playing/programming every instrument himself.
On Again and Again, the second single to be lifted from the album, Michael explains, "Much of this album was written as I was trying to stave off the onset of cabin fever during the various lockdowns during the pandemic. One of the ways I'd do this was by composing a piece of music based around different challenges/restrictions I'd set for myself. Kind of like etudes for composers, I guess.
In the case of "Again and Again," the challenge was to compose something that had the same musical theme repeating, unchanged, throughout the whole track and find different ways to keep it interesting for as long as possible.
So, even though lots of different instruments come and go, and the chords are continually changing underneath, and the drums are all irregular and glitching out at points, the whole thing is held together by same ostinato from the beginning of track being played again and again throughout the 5 minute runtime, hence the name.”