Tonal Union

Feinberg, Ezra

Soft Power

Tonal Union

Ezra Feinberg’s third album Soft Power sees the composer-guitarist enlist an impressive array of fellow musicians including Mary Lattimore, David Moore (Bing & Ruth), Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and Robbie Lee. Defined by its abundance of melodies, repeating figures and ecstatic improvisations, Soft Power exudes an enlightened and transformative spirit to empower the listener. Feinberg, a practicing psychoanalyst and former founding member of the San Francisco psychedelic collective Citay (Dead Oceans / Important Records) resides in the artistic enclave of upstate New York’s Hudson River Valley. Initial recordings emerged in the late summer of 2020, before added synthesis with collaborator John Thayer (Arp, Sunwatchers) during early 2021. Soft Power follows previous albums Recumbent Speech (2020) and Pentimento And Others (2018). Feinberg artfully transcends the listener to an enriched place, his compositions distinguished by the deep humanity that lies at their core, plugging the listener into a state of wide eyed being, open and alive. Soft Power then is Feinberg’s own mantra but also one of power giving—a colourful catharsis translated into music. Feinberg’s music always speaks to the listener, but Soft Power, in whispering, speaks loudest.

Diab, C.

Imerro

Tonal Union

Caton Diab creates soundscapes that evoke the spectacular wilderness of his childhood home in northern Vancouver Island. Incorporating experimental textures, folk overtones and tape manipulations, C. Diab uniquely finds the unseen spaces in-between, and fittingly dubs his creations “post-classical grunge”. Imerro explores new sonic realms and is the culmination of a sound world that Diab has built up since the critically acclaimed No Perfect Wave (2016) and subsequent releases Exit Rumination (2018), White Whale (2020) and In Love & Fracture (2021). The Wire calls it "ambient music in the best sense—music for living, which can be both non-invasive and immersive... epic" Imerro was recorded in late July and August of 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, BC, during the summer’s unprecedented second “heat dome”, which saw temperatures soaring to over 40 degrees. Recorded with regular collaborator and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart, the pair journeyed by boat to the studio to a place with minimal distraction with a plan of “simple ecstatic improvisation.” Diab explains: “I wanted to place myself in a space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music ‘shows its face’ as you move along. I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play.”

Anenon

Moons Melt Milk Light

Tonal Union

Anenon returns with a highly anticipated new album Moons Melt Milk Light, bearing his most personal, expressive, and arresting works to date. Anenon is the ongoing solo studio and live project of Brian Allen Simon, whom since 2010 has released multiple albums and EPs to critical acclaim, including the highly revered Tongue (2018) and Petrol (2016). Moons Melt Milk Light is direct, efficient, and unwavering in its immediacy. Anenon departs from the electronics of previous works, and embarks on a reductive, almost entirely acoustic approach consisting of piano, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, and field recordings. All of the music was improvised with everything recorded as either a first or second take with no edits. Any layering happened fast and in the moment, and yet the sonic architecture of the whole feels both planned and refined. The production of Moons Melt Milk Light began in the autumn of 2022, and was recorded at home in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, informed in part by an acoustic collaboration with the artist Susan Cianciolo during the vernissage of her 2022 Paris exhibition, RUN 14: FIELD of existence, as well as solo performances mostly at casual non-venues such as wine bars and inns around Europe that same year. It was the combination of these experiences that led Simon to pursue this immediate approach of improvised acoustic instrumentation. Moons Melt Milk Light is a hyper-personal statement contained in a visceral beauty, a compact record of threadbare honesty and musical prowess seldom found in the musical art...

Akusmi

Lines

Tonal Union

London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Akusmi presents Lines, an exhilarating new collection of works born from the desire to take where the acclaimed debut album Fleeting Future left off—in search of new forms. Formed with a sense of urgency and a reductive approach, Lines is almost entirely comprised of alto saxophone, clarinet and piano, with embellishments of ambience and minimal percussive elements. Recorded in full at his home studio in London, Pascal Bideau speaks about the process: “I wanted to go a bit more horizontal and ambient, work with layers of lines, might they be dotted or straight, and leave them to unfold and see where they would take me.” “Secant” is the electrifying and cinematic opener, emerging with the main motif deriving from the recording sessions of Fleeting Future. It’s distinct sound echoes New York, a homage in part to the works of Steve Reich and inspired also by train travels across the English countryside. Rhythmical looping pianos unite with shifting strings that build to a symphony of hypnotic rich layers, towards a euphoric and filmic climax. “Oblique,” on the other hand is otherworldly and hopeful, a breathtaking musical meeting between jazz and ambient minimalist music. Rich layered saxophones sound a patterned melody, meshed with dotted piano, swirling electronics and percussive hits, before deep-diving into shimmering ambient tones echoing like summer rainfall against windows. Akusmi uniquely finds the spaces in between experimental, crossover classical and ambient music. “Parallel” is the ambient companion to the acclaimed title track...

Blue Lake

Sun Arcs

Tonal Union

New Clear Vinyl Pressing coming January 2024. Blue Lake is the musical moniker of American born, Copenhagen based multidisciplinary artist and musician Jason Dungan, who signs to the Tonal Union imprint for the release of his new longform album Sun Arcs. It follows 2022’s release Stikling, earning a nomination for Album of the Year at the Danish Music Awards plus warm praise from The Hum blog and musicians and DJs alike including Jack Rollo (Time is Away/NTS) and Carla dal Forno. A self taught player, Dungan began freely experimenting with self-built multi-string instruments, preferring to build his own hybrid 48-string zither and working in the realms of left-field ambient music, off kilter folk and improvised acoustic minimalism. The starting point of Sun Arcs saw Jason travel for a week alone to Andersabo, a cabin set in the idyllic Swedish woods just outside of Unnaryd, known also as the music project, festival and residency space which has been run by Dungan since 2016, hosting artists like Sofie Birch, Johan Carøe and Ellen Arkbro. Whilst writing 1-2 pieces per day, a conscious decision was made to leave behind everyday distractions and shut out the outside world to instead focus on the natural passage of time as Dungan recalls: “My only sense of time came from these daily walks out in the woods with my dog, and an awareness of the sun’s path as it moved across the sky each day.” Musically it portrays a form of double life led by an American-identifying person...

Akusmi

Fleeting Future

Tonal Union

Akusmi is the new project moniker of French-born, London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Pascal Bideau, who signs to the new Tonal Union imprint for the release of his album ‘Fleeting Future.’ With its hallucinatory, genre-defying blend of minimalism, cosmic jazz and Fourth World influences, and in its quest for optimism in the face of unknown and limitless possibility. ‘Fleeting Future’ stands apart as an inventive and inspirational debut. The creation of the album’s richly colourful and multi-layered sound world was originally inspired by Bideau’s journey to Indonesia, where he immersed himself in traditional Gamelan and gong music. Many of the themes, motifs and melodies on ‘Fleeting Future’ seed from the ‘Slendro’ scale, one of the essential tuning systems used in Gamelan. However it is not musical scales, but scales as in the size or extent of things that most fascinates Bideau, specifically he explains; “the compelling way things dramatically change when you shift from any given scale to another.” The album connects directly to nature and the wider world in its evocation of perceptive shifts and transitions from microscopic to macro scale, as evidenced by the opening title track ‘Fleeting Future’, on which a simple dotted saxophone line morphs and billows into synths, brass and strings, indicating the musical voyage that lies ahead. Like the start of a journey or adventure it is full of anticipation, its arborescent growth conveying the optimism of the unknown and of limitless possibility. The album centrepiece ‘Neo Tokyo’ is a vibrating, ebullient mass...