From carpet tiles to call center lines to Bulgarian bee barters—an uncanny symphony of sounds, woven seamlessly into one surreal tapestry.
Like a shuffled playing card in a surreal game of musical chance
Wevie Stonder returns after a fifteen-year hiatus with Sure Beats Living, an off-kilter collection of warped compositions released on Skam. This release dives deep into a weathered collage of sonic detritus—pulled from an eclectic array of sources. Found audio, fragmented speech, and surreal auditory landscapes converge in a disheveled mosaic of experimentation.
Across twelve curious vignettes, fragmented rhythms and fizzing interludes swirl in and out of focus, colliding with moments of quiet introspection and bursts of frenetic fun-packed energy. The album draws from a broad palette: from cracked lounge melodies and deconstructed beats to intercepted broadcast fragments and warped field recordings. Each track unveils peculiar new characters, strange anecdotes, and improbable narratives set against a shifting backdrop that moves effortlessly from ambient stillness to cinematic unease, sub-bass heaviness to skewed R&B, and further into territories not easily recognized.
As noted in the press release, the five-member collective—helmed by Al Boorman—navigates this sonic labyrinth with playful unpredictability. Rather than simply remix or rearrange, they dissect and repurpose, treating each sliver of audio like a shuffled playing card in a surreal game of musical chance. From carpet tiles to call center lines to Bulgarian bee barters—an uncanny symphony of sounds, woven seamlessly into one surreal tapestry.
Sure Beats Living is available on Skam. [Bandcamp]
