Leon Johnson’s Airport People project has roots in its creator’s past. A child of what has been labelled a “Civil Rights dynasty,” the Indianapolis-based multi-instrumentalist spent his early years travelling across the US and Africa with his family as his grandfather fought against apartheid. A life of constant departures and arrivals, never fully settling in one place. But the young Johnson found comfort within the environment of the airport, watching the people around him, sitting quietly and taking stock. An airport, after all, is a space in which “we’re in between where we’re going and where we were,” as Johnson phrases it, “and we don’t have much to say.”
The meditative, welcoming style of debut Airport People record From Nine Mornings taps into this state of mind. Out later this summer on Whited Sepulchre Records, the album offers a neo-classical sound marked by its modest tones and easy space, inviting the listener to step out of the perpetual movement of their day if only for a short while. The result is not only comforting, offering the sedate pace and order of the airport as a balm against hectic life, but also deceptively rebellious in nature. Standing in opposition to the accepted modes of existence. When so much contemporary wisdom relies on clear plans and paths of progression, on being productive and racing from A to B, then embracing the slack rhythms of the in-between becomes an act of defiance. Why race to flee the liminal spaces, Johnson asks, when they might hold our only chance of peace?
The idea extends to the very creation of the record. After losing his job and moving home, Johnson used the freedom of the in-between to work on a new melody each morning, soon building up a collection which would eventually be curated and edited to leave the nine mornings of the album. Melodies supported and developed by arrangements of piano, violin, upright bass, guitar, drums, field recordings and manipulated orchestral samples, elements all handled with characteristic precision which to craft a sound both bright and careful.
Take single ‘from morning no. 2’. Textures of gentle rainfall draw the listener in before the piano emerges, fond and vibrant and coloured by just the smallest shade of sadness, as all fond things must be. But Airport People does not present its moods clearly, instead working to accentuate whatever the listener might be feeling. A personal soundtrack open to interpretation, crafted to fit any listener’s surroundings.
