Avant-garde
SEE: Toulouse post-rockers BRUIT ≤ announce April album; see the video for ‘Renaissance’
ITS MEMBERS having been through the major label wringer, Toulousain post-rock outfit BRUIT ≤ had no desire to make the same mistakes again; and its members decided to strip back to that initial spark: the creative act. The initial trio of bassist and violinist Clément Libes, drummer Damien Gouzou and guitarist Théophile Antolinos didn’t even …
See: the video for Masayoshi Fujita’s ‘Thunder’; a flow of sonic delight for electronica and marimba on Erased Tapes
IF YOU like your music deliciously abstract, abstractedly delicious; arranged beautifully, an absolute world of evocative sound; fell hard, for instance, for the albums Ryuichi Sakamoto made with Alva Noto, or are like a kid at Christmas while waiting for the lusciousness of Chihei Hatakeyama’s new album, then attendez-vous, s’il vous plait; for Erased Tapes …
Track: Ueda Takasayu – ‘Every Clouds Calls My Name’: Phantom Limb debutante’s impressionistic, psychotropic odyssey
BORN in Hiroshima and raised partly in Germany and Austria, debuting Phantom Limb artist Ueda Takayasu says he spent his childhood feeling stateless, distant from his own cultural identity and curiously “un-Japanese”. Even now, in adulthood, having returned to Japan, he speaks English, German and Japanese at home. His internal response to this deep-rooted search for meaning …
Track: UNKNOWN ME’s ‘Open The Sense’ is a rainbow ambient bonbon
YOU QUITE possibly haven’t come across UNKNOWN ME, a Japanese collective with a very particularly glimmering, space-age approach to the the business of ambience; in fact, if their moniker is anything to go by, maybe even they haven’t. But if trippy electronic sound is your bag, and it oughta be, then perhaps now is an …
See: The video for Matt Emery’s ‘Anxiety Mist’: a samurai waiting for battle as told by solo cello
BRITISH composer Matt Emery, who calls the lovely Injazero Records home, has launched a series of recordings focusing on one instrument at a time; and for his first EP in the series has chosen to shine a light on the cello, which is starting to find a bigger appreciation as a standalone instrument through the …
Track: Deniz Cuylan – ‘Object Of Desire’: a second luscious essay in solo guitar pastoralism
TURKISH multi-instrumentalist and composer Deniz Cuylan, whose altogether lovely experimental classical guitar essay “Flaneurs In Hakon” we fell for a fortnight back, has proved that he has plenty more guitar craft up his sleeve with his second single drop from his soon-coming album, “Object Of Desire” which, if you’re of a certain instrumental guitar inclination, …
News: Secrets of Elements announces April album; hear the grand electronic sweep of ‘Cassini’
THE GERMAN composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Johann Pätzold, who records as Secret of Elements, has announced the release of his first album since 2011’s Minds. It’s to be entitled Chronos, and it’ll be with us come the back end of April; but today he’s dropped as a welcome the track “Cassini”, which you can hear below. It fuses …
See: Tristan Welch – ‘I Live In Filth’: Washington guitarist presents icy dronescapes
WASHINGTON’S dark ambient guitarchitect Tristan Welch has announced a new album for the end of April, Temporary Preservation; and has released a first taster single in the twilit soundscapes of “I Live In Filth”. Take a listen herein. Tristan follows on from last year’s Capitalist Teeth and Ambient Distress and continues his sonic exploration of …
See: Tristan Kasten-Krause – ‘Dawn Looming’: delicious dronescapes for a new day
NEW YORK-based bassist and composer Tristan Kasten-Krause likes to mix it up, see a little of the creative world. As well as being active on the Big Apple’s DIY and experimental scenes, he’s also played in Oklahoma!, in a production running on Broadway, which gives you any idea of his breadth and scope culturally. He …
Track: Cameron Knowler & Eli Winter share the spiralling guitar wonder of ‘Parapraxis of a Dragonfly’
TWO ADEPT young guns of the fingerstyle guitar, Cameron Knowler and Eli Winter really came to appreciate each other on a winter tour of the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas. The Trans-Pecos is a land of stark beauty, of ghost towns and mountain ranges. The pair spent the winter of 2018 gigging through the small …