LEO ABRAHAMS
From a young age, Leo Abrahams has lived and breathed music-making. He’s channelled this passion into a prolific yet unpredictable career as a producer, collaborator, composer and solo artist in his own right. His behind-the-desk work has seen him sculpt records alongside the likes of Regina Spektor, Editors, David Holmes, Frightened Rabbit and David Byrne as well as the legendary Brian Eno, who – as Leo reveals in our conversation – first encountered Abrahams in a fittingly random way.
Leo’s own compositions, collected across nine solo albums, are layered and textured behemoths of sound, with his distinctively emotive guitar playing often to the fore. Leo is happy to traverse a variety of studios depending on the needs of a particular artist, yet tends to work from both his home studio and Coronet Street Studios in Hoxton, located (almost secretly) beneath a piano store. Which is where we meet Leo…
MusicTech How did your interest in music-making begin?
Leo Abrahams I got obsessed with the record player when I was three. I used to put the same records on over and over again, which must have driven my parents mad. I think that’s when they realised I had a bit of a thing for music. After that, when I was around six or seven, I would sit on the edge of the carpet and pretend to play the fringe of the carpet as if it were a piano. Just trying to give them a hint that maybe they should buy me one!
I studied for a year at the Royal Academy of Music in the hopes of becoming a classical composer, but I soon became disillusioned with that course and took up a role as touring guitarist in Imogen Heap’s band. That was for her first album, in the early days of her career, so we’d end up playing in pubs to tiny crowds, or sometimes no one at all. But it was enough to make me realise that was probably the way I wanted to go.
MT So at what point did you become involved in the production world?
There’s different strands to it. I went to school with Jon Hopkins and he and I were in Imogen’s band together, and then we started working for various songwriters and producers just as session guys.
Imogen took me one night to a
