(07.04.05) Wooden Beard is Leigh Toro’s debut album as Flotel and follows Bowd from Expanding’s current series of 7″ singles and the Bosso Fataka 12″ EP on UK label Arable. Wooden Beard is released as a vinyl LP with a limited edition 7″ (200 copies) featuring exclusive tracks and as a CD (with extra tracks).
Wooden Beard is Toro’s exploration of the activity in and around the city of Nottingham in the UK where he lives. Observed from various physical locations in the city, the album represents Toro’s vision of what he sees and where he fits in to daily life. Robin Saville of Isan described some of Toro’s work on Arable as “the sounds on this record appear to have come straight from the inside of Leigh’s head and onto the vinyl” and describes his music as “a purity of vision rarely matched in contemporary electronica.” While the connection to the changing face of a city isn’t immediately evident, Saville’s explanations of channelling thoughts direct to vinyl are.
Often gentle, sometimes tense, occasionally energetic and optimistic, Wooden Beard explores a range of subtly different emotions direct from the mind of the composer. “Carry Water, Chop Wood” is on one hand gentle and vulnerable yet on the other is strong and decisive while “Locus Solus” has an air of increasing tension about it and “99 Levels of Undo” is fidgety and uneasy before steadily calming down towards its close. In further contrast, the slowly paced “Amused to Death” features solemn piano keys, a mood that continues into the electronic and percussive “A New Version of Now” and “Wooden Beard” trilogy that close the album.
Wooden Beard is a flowing, quite serene album with a restrained level of abstraction. Toro’s ability to combine carefully gentle melodies with quirky effects and beat structures only intensifies the experience without making it obtrusive.
Wooden Beard is out now on Expanding.
