https://chants.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1bboGoBc0rr3oXFdFlAjSC?si=aV7mp9JuSeeCKTIUHOeLKA
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/chants/388935745
Catchy polyrhythms and ambient electronics and occasional loud squelchy giant footsteps across a candy marsh.
Good stuff! I hear that the artist might lurk somewhere around here too...
New album came out a few weeks ago, remix EP is out today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zne-9-38jWg
https://ra.co/reviews/33585
The samples on Poly Pointillism, Jordan Cohen's second album as Chants, were crafted through a series of daily percussion videos he recorded at home in April 2020. In making this record, the Wisconsin-based producer retired from his earlier affairs with club music. Many of the LP's tracks feel like a diligent study in process music, which Reich defined as compositions with a "build," or pieces written in a way that exposes the gradual process of the music-making. In "Music For No Musicians," a cluster of accessible melodies ping-pong off each other, eventually expanding into complicated polyrhythms that make singling out one pattern like a game of tracking the dice in a seasoned magician's box. The track is likely a reference to Reich's legend-making piece, Music For 18 Musicians, where overlapping patterns render single chords undetectable, thereby generating melancholic textures (it could also easily be a nod to Erick Hall's recent venture into electronically reproducing Reich's composition). Whatever his inspiration, the result is utterly transfixing. "Fifth Season" opens with duplicates of the same five-note melody played on twinkling kalimba and mallet percussion. As the piece unfolds, additional patterns layer atop the original phrase, ornamenting it with carefully placed notes. The song's texture feels both imperceptibly airy and tethered down, the latter mostly attributed to a trudging main melody. In "Iridescent Rhythm," the album's title could describe the bouncing notes accentuating certain sections of interweaving melodies, slowly building the music into an intricate tapestry of sounds.
Brimming with triumphant harmonies, "Displacement" is an exercise in the beautiful possibilities of doubling. Cohen, a trained percussionist, also makes use of his acute knowledge of rhythm to play with the grid. In the quirky "Prismatic Spray," melodic trills seemingly emerge out of thin air, squeezed between the outer edges of the percolating beats we're introduced to at the beginning of the track. It sounds like video game music, if the person playing was highly skilled and racking up points like light work.
Working with limited tools and a pared-down practice, Cohen proves himself to be an agile rhythmist worth his salt. "Deep Home" incorporates suspended rhythms that land like stripped-down gqom. Moving at lightning-speed, the frisky rhythms of "Shimmer And Glimmer" sound like they're chasing each other. What prevents the instruments from running away completely? A bass, plus something less ordinary: what sounds like a parrot squawk on the one and three.
Omg thanks y'all, I've never had my own thread. <3
I'll leave now so people can talk shit if they want.
― change display name (Jordan), Friday, 26 February 2021 19:47 (three years ago) link
one month passes...
two years pass...