SONAR - Three Movements
Release date: June 23, 2023
SONAR with David Torn and J. Peter Schwalm: Three Movements
Since 2012, the four members of the Swiss quartet SONAR have made an international name for themselves by creating a unique style of avant-progressive, post-minimal rock music. They have toured in the USA, Canada, Japan and Europe and have released six studio albums, two live albums, an EP and a LP with remixes by Bill Laswell. With their fourth album Vortex they began a working relationship with acclaimed US guitarist David Torn, one of the world's best known experimental guitarists, who has recorded with countless musicians including David Bowie and David Sylvian. John Kelman, music critic for All About Jazz, wrote: "One listen to even just a minute or two from Vortex and it becomes crystal clear that, in the 21st century, few groups have emerged as incomparable, innovative and imaginative as Sonar."
SONAR stands for "SONic ARchitecture," which alludes to their intention of creating complex musical structures with the use of polyrhythms, odd meters and isorhythms. This led Sid Smith, music critic for Prog Magazine, to say: "Had MC Escher made music instead of drawing his famously impossible and perplexing perspectives, it would sound like SONAR." Fusing a minimal esthetic with a slow-build approach to dramaturgy and the ecstatic power of a rock band, SONAR create sonic rituals unlike anything else on the market.
For their new album Three Movements, they have again teamed up with Torn and additionaly - for the first time - with German electro/acoustic composer and producer J. Peter Schwalm, known for his work with Brian Eno. The album was recorded in 2022 and mixed by German touch guitarist Markus Reuter. In the liner notes of the album, acclaimed music critic Jeff Miers from The Buffalo News writes:
"A two-year break due to Covid provided opportunity for the development of what is surely Sonar’s most ambitious work to date.
The three pieces that form the album ultimately reveal themselves to be movements in a single long-form composition, one that moves with intention through peaks and valleys of the timbral, temporal and textural variety, leaving the listener emotionally exhausted but spiritually satiated at journey’s end.
With each listen, new details emerge, all of them worth noting, as minimalist guitar motifs commingle with delicious restraint, polyrhythms lend an air of dramatic unfolding, and the bass makes statements of rhythmic and tonal stability at one moment, then skillfully disrupts the equilibrium with odd-time ostinati the next. The sum effect suggests what it might be like to watch a relay race being run inside a hall of mirrors, a feat of daring handled with offhand grace and unerring eloquence by the band members.
Atop it all sits iconoclastic guitarist David Torn, like the Buddha on a mountaintop, offering shards of audio poetry in a language you’ve never heard and yet are somehow familiar with.
Sonar summons a world of wonder here, and invites you inside for what demands to be an immersive experience. In that world, nothing is where you thought it would be. And yet, everything is in its right place."
SONAR:
Stephan Thelen: guitar, programming
Bernhard Wagner: guitar, live looping
Christian Kuntner: bass
Manuel Pasquinelli: drums
Personnel:
David Torn: guitar, live looping
J. Peter Schwalm: electronics