Sonar

Under the direction of label head Steve Feigenbaum, Cuneiform has searched hither and yon for artists across a wide spectrum of avant rock, jazz, and unclassifiable music for decades, and it was probably only a matter of time before the imprint released an album by a group specializing in the Devil's music…

Swiss experimental rock quartet Sonar (whose name is a portmanteau of "sonic" and "architecture") comprise guitarists Stephan Thelen and Bernhard Wagner, bassist Christian Kuntner, and drummer Manuel Pasquinelli. The bandmembers bring an array of talents uniquely suited to creating Sonar's precise and rhythmically complex yet spacious and streamlined post-minimalist sound, harmonically idiosyncratic with the guitars and bass tuned in tritones (an interval given the Latin name diabolus in musica – the devil in music – during medieval times). The California-born Thelen is a strong admirer of the early- to mid-'70s (Starless and Bible Black) and early- to mid-'80s (Discipline) editions of King Crimson, and participated with the Venezuela-born Wagner in Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft seminars in the '90s. Thelen (Sonar's principal composer) also studied classical guitar, and he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Zurich.

Tranceportation Volume 2 is the next destination in Sonar’s ongoing musical journey as the Swiss-based band celebrates 10 years of cutting-edge music-making.

Sonar’s fourth release Vortex reflects the sound of surprise. After three uncompromising quartet albums exploring the edges of minimalist groove, the Swiss group has partnered with renowned guitarist, composer and producer David Torn for its RareNoise debut. The band, comprised of guitarists Stephan Thelen and Bernhard Wagner, bassist Christian Kuntner and drummer Manuel Pasquinelli have long been celebrated for combining the visceral power and dynamics of art rock with a minimalist aesthetic. Their previous album, 2015’s Black Light, attracted significant media and musician attention. Legendary avant-guitarist Henry Kaiser took a particular interest in the group and was determined to pair them up with Torn for their next album.

Daniel Taylor is a Canadian countertenor, one of a group that has come on the scene in recent years and given promise that soon the countertenor voice will be considered less an exotic specialty and more a generally cultivated voice type. Taylor, perhaps more than other countertenors active today, sounds as though he is engaging in a natural kind of voice production rather than channeling his voice into circuitous channels. His sound is quite awesomely smooth, little touched by vibrato or strong passion, restrained, extremely elegant, and modest in dimension – perfect, in short, for the Dowland songs and mostly smaller Purcell airs that make up the bulk of this two-CD compilation, drawn from a pair of earlier releases.

"Had MC Escher made music instead of drawing impossible and perplexing perspectives, it would sound like Sonar" is how writer Sid Smith once assessed the Swiss-based band’s work. It remains an apt description for the outfit’s method of creating hypnotic pieces by gradually building intricate patterns of picked notes, plucked harmonics, mesmeric bass, and insistent rhythms. The music created by Stephan Thelen (tritone guitar), Bernard Wagner (tritone guitar), Christian Kuntner (tritone bass), Manuel Pasquinelli (drums, percussion) harnesses elements of rock, jazz and contemporary classical minimalism and fuses them to create a distinctive musical language…

Tranceportation Volume 2 is the next destination in Sonar’s ongoing musical journey as the Swiss-based band celebrates 10 years of cutting-edge music-making. Once again the quartet formed in 2010 have joined forces with internationally-respected experimental guitarist, David Torn, to deliver an album brimming with a sound that's marked by bold, resonant creativity. The group’s polyrhythmic approach, utilising various elements of tension, release, space and dynamics rewrites the rules about what guitar-dominated music is capable of achieving. Sonar’s founder, guitarist Stephan Thelen, whose work has been performed by the Kronos Quartet, brings forward a further instalment of compositions that seamlessly blend a pointillistic, metrical complexity with deep subterranean grooves that engage both the heart and the mind of the listener…

"Al Rincón Por Soñar" (To The Corner for Dream) is the new album by Rafael Pacha, a Spanish multi-instrumentalist who has worked with The Samurai of Prog and Last Knight. Rafael combines with great talent modern folk with progressive rock with influences of Robert Fripp, Steve Hackett, Lyle Mays, Mike Oldfield, Peter Gabriel and David Gilmour. The cover and title of this work are based on "Al Rincón por Soñar" of Roberto Reula, a magnificent spanish sculptor.
For the recording sessions of this new work, Rafael has been accompanied by other musicians such as Manoel Macía, Kimmo Pörsti (The Samurai of Prog), Carlos Espejo, Francisco J. Bocero, Javier Márquez and also with Jose Manuel Medina (Last Knight).