For the past 20 years Leighton Craig has played in a clutch of key outsider Brisbane combos, including free-rock mainstays The Lost Domain, pop miniaturists The Deadnotes and the dream-float duo Primitive Motion with Sandra Selig. As a solo artist, Leighton has pursued a low-tech approach to keyboard studies, song forms, field recording and sound installation.
Later this month the Guide to Saints label will release "Green Coronet", Leighton's long overdue follow-up to his Room 40 album "11 Easy Pieces". Largely a live home studio recording, Green Coronet is a dreamy suite of four cyclic jams celebrating the fuzzy tones of his favoured Coronet Phase 2 amplifier. With its warm keyboard and clarinet cycles, looped aquatic choral refrains and microphones dangling out the studio window, Green Coronet unfolds as an unlikely sub-tropical Harold Budd homage - with a lo-fi suburban edge and noise outro. The tape will be available later this month in an edition of 100 with screen printed covers. And later this year Leighton's LP "Diamond Eye" will be released on new Melbourne imprint Triste Tropiques - a collection of lo-fi looping keyboard works recorded between 2006-2010.
Leighton's soundtrack is a long form hymn for his dog Spencer, who recently passed away. Recorded earlier this month at home in Brisbane, "You Wear Gold" is a slow burning mantra sung over waves of keyboard, synth, clarinet, cymbals and acoustic guitar.
