Leo Abrahams

Leo Matthew Abrahams (born 1977 in Camden, London) is an English musician, composer and producer.

He has collaborated with Brian Eno, Katie Melua, Imogen Heap, Jarvis Cocker, Carl Barât, Regina Spektor, Jon Hopkins and Paul Simon.

After attending the Royal Academy of Music in England, he started his musical career by touring as lead guitarist with Imogen Heap.

Through Heap, Abrahams was introduced to alternative folk artist Ed Harcourt, who Abrahams joined as a guitarist, playing lead guitar and scoring the instrumental parts on Harcourt's 2001 album Here Be Monsters, as well as Harcourt's subsequent albums.

A couple of years later Abrahams had a fortuitous meeting with producer and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno in a Notting Hill guitar shop.

Eno stated, "I spotted him trying out a guitar, the first I've ever seen in a guitar shop who wasn't playing 'Stairway to Heaven,' so I thought he must be good."

Eno invited Abrahams to his studio, and Abrahams contributed guitar to Eno's album with J. Peter Schwalm, Drawn From Life, which was released in 2001.

He arranged the string sections for the 2003 album Silence is Easy by Starsailor, also conducting the orchestra at Abbey Road Studios.

Inspired by his work on the film score to the 2003 film Code 46, Abrahams created his first solo album in 2005: Honeytrap, released on Just Music.

It relies primarily on ambient sounds generated exclusively by guitars, rejecting keyboard effects, sampling, computer effects, or keyboards.

The BBC referred to the album as "subtle, imaginative and sometimes intoxicatingly lovely."

Since 2005 he has released five solo albums, largely in an ambient style involving complex arrangements and a use of guitar-generated textures.

Abrahams went on to contribute instrumentals to a number of musicians produced by Eno, including Grace Jones, Seun Kuti, Nick Cave, and Paul Simon's 2006 album Surprise.

Scene Memory (2006), his second solo album, was also in an ambient style, with sounds created entirely by playing electric guitars through chains of laptop effects.

A Boomkat review stated "Abrahams blends piano, guitar, and electronics to an almost euphoric effect – the record feels like you are walking in a dream."

Sea of Tranquility reviewed the album saying "he respects a certain level of restraint – the solo guitar- putting into sharp relief the...limitless opportunities for the resultant sounds and form. This work is thoughtful, adventurous, and the result of a high degree of artistic integrity."

His third album, the 2007 The Unrest Cure, was initially built out of sessions in New York with David Holmes' rhythm section.

Brian Eno, KT Turnstall, Ed Harcourt, Foy Vance, Pati Yang, Merz, Phoebe Legere, Kari Kleiv, and poet Bingo Gazingo also contributed to the album.

It involves heavier guitar lines than the previous two albums.

On his 2008 album Grape and the Grain, Abrahams continued to use English Folk themes, mainly with pieces featuring guitar, added instrumentation such as cello and medieval lute, and occasionally a hurdy-gurdy, which he learnt to play for the record.

He has also co-written or arranged a variety of film soundtracks, including Peter Jackson's 2009 release The Lovely Bones and Steve McQueen's Hunger.

Abrahams has produced Regina Spektor's album Remember Us to Life.

Hayden Thorpe's Diviner, Editors' Violence and Ghostpoet's Dark Days + Canapés.

Abrahams attended the Royal Academy of Music.

He studied under Steve Martland and Nick Ingman.

During his studies, Abrahams was invited to join Imogen Heap's touring band.

He left the Royal Academy of Music to tour England for several months.

He has co-written or arranged a variety of film soundtracks, including Peter Jackson's 2009 release The Lovely Bones with Brian Eno, Steve McQueen's award-winning Hunger with David Holmes, Seeking 1906 with Simon Winchester, Gardens of Paradise, The Graduates, After Happily Ever After, and also on the Oceans series with David Holmes.

In 2010, Abrahams joined with long-time collaborators Jon Hopkins and Brian Eno to create the album Small Craft on a Milk Sea.

The album is based largely on a two-week period of joint improvisation, as well as "several years of jams between the three of us", and is officially described as "a Brian Eno album featuring Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins."

As a guitarist he has played on over 100 records by artists including Florence and the Machine, Annie Lennox, Marianne Faithfull and Badly Drawn Boy.

With David Holmes he contributed several instruments and co-wrote several tracks on Holmes' release The Holy Pictures.

Abrahams has written with and produced for a variety of musicians.

He contributed additional production to David Byrne and Brian Eno's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, co-writing the lead single "Strange Overtones".

His production credits include Katie Melua, Wild Beasts, Paolo Nutini, Frightened Rabbit, Oscar and the Wolf, Hotei, Karl Hyde solo album, Diagrams, Josephine Oniyama, Carl Barât (of The Libertines), Chris Difford (of Squeeze), Brett Anderson (of Suede), Iarla O'Lionaird, Sparrow and the Workshop and Kill It Kid.

He has played guitar for Pulp on their 2011–2012 reunion dates, although was not an official member of the band.

He has released two further EPs on the Just Music label, and also released a vocal-based record on One Little Indian in 2011.