Michael Brook

I started working in the music world, meaning albums, concerts, producing other artists, when I moved to England in 1985. It was an amazing time of creativity, community, and exploration.

 

In 2024 I went back to Pakistan, partly to promote a “new” Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan album, Chain Of Light, but also to revisit a place and people that have been a big part of my life. It reminded me how much I missed the recording and live music world, so I’ve decided to work in that area again, not exclusively, but for a bit.

 

As a total bonus, after conversations with the original label 4AD, they’ve  committed to remastering and reissuing two albums of mine that had been released in the early 90s, Cobalt Blue and Live At The Aquarium.

 

Cobalt Blue was my second “solo” album, after Hybrid. I put solo in quotes because there was a serious amount of help and guidance from Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Daniel Lanois, Russell Mills and Ivo Watts Russell. Even though it was my second album I really didn’t know much about composition, arranging, producing etc, and the chaps above made the album far better than it would have been. So thanks, and phew!

 

Around that time I'd arranged a promotional concert for the release of Cobalt Blue, at the London Zoo. Happily, a last minute suggestion by the sound guy that he record the concert ended up being released as a live (promotional) LP.
Both of these albums have been remastered by Rashad Becker in Berlin, and will be released as a limited edition, crystal clear vinyl double-album for Record Store Day on April 18, 2026.

 

All of the above is also a long-winded intro to the news that I’ll also be doing the first concert in about 30 years of this material, and more, at The Bang On A Can Festival, May 2, in Brooklyn. If all goes well, there will be further shows announced as they happen.

 

If you want to be notified about shows, releases and other developments, please sign up for the mailing list. It will only be about new things that are happening or that I believe you might find interesting. There won't be anything diaretical about it, in case you want to avoid that kind of thing. I know I do.