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Eric Chenaux
Slowly Paradise
CST131 180gLP • CD • DL
Release date: 09 March 2018
Duration: 41:58
Eric Chenaux operates among various musical 'traditions' but perhaps most broadly, his records grapple with the relationship between improvisation and structure in very particular, unique, idiosyncratic ways – and quite without irony or cynicism, through love.
Because fundamentally, Chenaux writes love songs, which he sings in a voice honeyed and clear, while his guitar gently bends, frazzes, chortles, diverges and decomposes. This juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice.
As a solo artist, Chenaux's improvisation methods are in certain literal ways solipsistic: as a singer-songwriter, he plays his guitar around and against his voice, challenging easy notions of harmony/harmoniousness, improvising 'with himself' in pursuit of surprising himself (and his listeners) as he unfurls ribbons of voice and instrument often to the point of seeming independence, all the better to capture – and be captured by – unforeseen, intimate moments of interdependence: a definition of freedom, as a profoundly intentional state of openness, presence and play.
Even within avant-garde currents of folk and jazz balladry, Eric Chenaux feels like an outlier. Yet his music remains wonderfully warm, generous and fundamentally accessible in spite of its irrefutable iconoclasm. While the constitutive elements of Chenaux’s solo work in recent years might suggest some underlying devotion to asceticism, the opposite is much more true: his musical reveries resist, critique and counteract austerity (in all its forms) in a joyful abandonment to the improvised space where playfulness and light-heartedness are taken seriously, and where love is invoked and expressed, without reductive or facile sentimentalism, in a full, nuanced, clear-eyed suspension/rejection of the cynical life.
Slowly Paradise is Eric Chenaux’s new solo record – a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. It is arguably Chenaux’s most assured and essential solo work, expanding upon the critical acclaim his previous releases Guitar & Voice and Skullsplitter have rightly garnered.
Thanks for listening.
Because fundamentally, Chenaux writes love songs, which he sings in a voice honeyed and clear, while his guitar gently bends, frazzes, chortles, diverges and decomposes. This juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice.
As a solo artist, Chenaux's improvisation methods are in certain literal ways solipsistic: as a singer-songwriter, he plays his guitar around and against his voice, challenging easy notions of harmony/harmoniousness, improvising 'with himself' in pursuit of surprising himself (and his listeners) as he unfurls ribbons of voice and instrument often to the point of seeming independence, all the better to capture – and be captured by – unforeseen, intimate moments of interdependence: a definition of freedom, as a profoundly intentional state of openness, presence and play.
Even within avant-garde currents of folk and jazz balladry, Eric Chenaux feels like an outlier. Yet his music remains wonderfully warm, generous and fundamentally accessible in spite of its irrefutable iconoclasm. While the constitutive elements of Chenaux’s solo work in recent years might suggest some underlying devotion to asceticism, the opposite is much more true: his musical reveries resist, critique and counteract austerity (in all its forms) in a joyful abandonment to the improvised space where playfulness and light-heartedness are taken seriously, and where love is invoked and expressed, without reductive or facile sentimentalism, in a full, nuanced, clear-eyed suspension/rejection of the cynical life.
Slowly Paradise is Eric Chenaux’s new solo record – a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. It is arguably Chenaux’s most assured and essential solo work, expanding upon the critical acclaim his previous releases Guitar & Voice and Skullsplitter have rightly garnered.
Thanks for listening.
PACKAGING NOTES
Audiophile 180gram pressing in midnight ultra-black vinyl from Optimal (Germany) comes in a thick 24pt paperboard jacket printed on 100% recycled Orford cardstock, with black polylined paper dust sleeve, a 12"x24" poster printed on matte offset paper and a 320kbps MP3 download card.
CD comes in a custom 24pt paperboard mini-gatefold jacket printed on 100% recycled Orford cardstock with an inner dust sleeve housing the disc.
CREDITS
Eric Chenaux: vocals, electric and un-amplified electric guitar, drum, various electronics
Ryan Driver: Wurlitzer 200A
Marla Hlady: spinning microphones
Lyrics written in collaboration with Ryan Driver.
Produced by Eric Chenaux and Cyril Harrison.
Recorded and mixed by Cyril Harrison at Le Pouget and Danube, France, 2017.
Additional recording by Eric Chenaux at Avatar, Québec and by Sandro Perri at Sonology, Toronto.
Mastered at Grey Market in Montreal by Harris Newman.
Album artwork and design by Mariette Cousty.
Ryan Driver: Wurlitzer 200A
Marla Hlady: spinning microphones
Lyrics written in collaboration with Ryan Driver.
Produced by Eric Chenaux and Cyril Harrison.
Recorded and mixed by Cyril Harrison at Le Pouget and Danube, France, 2017.
Additional recording by Eric Chenaux at Avatar, Québec and by Sandro Perri at Sonology, Toronto.
Mastered at Grey Market in Montreal by Harris Newman.
Album artwork and design by Mariette Cousty.