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Fractal Sextet: Sky Full Of Hope
by Mike Jacobs
Calling Stephan Thelen's music an extension of the Swiss Minimalist movement may have once seemed appropriate. However, in the years since his band Sonar and Fractal Guitar projects have come to the fore, that characterization has increasingly become inadequate. Proximity, influence, and linkages exist but Thelen's copious activities in the last decade show such a deepening of his root concepts coupled with an embrace of the new, the notion is virtually moot. One of the projects that most ...
Continue ReadingFractal Sextet: Fractal Sextet
by Mike Jacobs
In the over two-decade-old “movement" that's come to be known as Swiss Minimalism, guitarist Stephan Thelen has pushed himself to the fore, both with his group SONAR and in solo projects. In recent years, he's been astonishingly prolific (releasing five albums from 2021-2022 alone). With recent group work in Sonar being expanded to include guitarist David Torn, his Fractal Guitar album series (Moonjune, 2019, 2021, 2022) garnering critical acclaim, live albums, Bill Laswell remixes, and his World Dialogue (Rare Noise, ...
Continue ReadingStephan Thelen: Fractal Sextet
by Mark Sullivan
Swiss composer/guitarist Stephan Thelen's two Fractal Guitar albums were largely multi-tracked affairs, involving considerable file sharing. The idea of organizing a band to perform the music live may have been inevitable. The resulting Fractal Sextet is an international project consisting of guitarist Jon Durant (USA), keyboard player and composer Fabio Anile (Italy), bassist Colin Edwin (UK), drummer Yogev Gabay (Israel), percussionist Andi Pupato (Switzerland), and Thelen on guitar and programming.The original plan was to get at least the ...
Continue ReadingBurnt Belief: Mutual Isolation
by Mark Sullivan
Mutual Isolation is the fourth album from Burnt Belief, the collaborative project of guitarist Jon Durant and bassist Colin Edwin. Edwin is known for playing in Porcupine Tree, his duet Twinscapes with bassist Lorenzo Feliciati, and O.R.k. with King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto, among other projects. Durant has made a series of solo soundscape albums and recently worked with composer & guitarist Stephan Thelen on their duet album Crossings (Alchemy Records, 2021) as well as Thelen's Fractal Guitar (MoonJune Records, ...
Continue ReadingColin Edwin & Lorenzo Feliciati: Twinscapes Vol. 2: A Modern Approach To The Dancefloor
by Mark Sullivan
On their first album, Twinscapes (Rare Noise, 2014), British bassist Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree) and Italian bassist Lorenzo Feliciati (Naked Truth) explored ambient soundscapes, improvisation and progressive jazz/rock with help from guest musicians like Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær (a pioneer of electronic jazz) and British saxophonist David Jackson (of Van der Graaf Generator). The second volume comes from the same place, but with a bit more emphasis on dance rhythms (as “dancefloor" in the subtitle implies). Italian ...
Continue ReadingColin Edwin & Lorenzo Feliciati: Twinscapes Vol. 2: A Modern Approach To The Dancefloor
by Dan McClenaghan
The cover art of Twinscapes Vol. 2: A Modern Approach To The Dancefloor features what looks like a cyborg, illuminated by hot electricity on the upper portion of its visage, a face otherwise surrounded by lifeless black. The image is fitting. The album's music--from bassists Colin Edwin and Lorenzo Feliciati--celebrates the dancefloor music of the '80s. A sound that, by its detractors, was often tagged sterile and mechanistic. And perhaps it was, but then that was said ...
Continue ReadingColin Edwin - Lorenzo Feliciati: Twinscapes
by John Ephland
From the bottom up, Twinscapes is a long time coming, and not just for bass players. Sonically, this 11-track suite plays on your ears and mind in ways that can defy gravity, combining soft audial touches to go along with earthy funk, the residue left a kind of smoke that lingers but filters, inevitably it seems, upwards. Twinscapes really is a kind of novel treatment of the electric bass, not that this sort of thing hasn't been done ...
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