Talvihorros fills his hollow body with tugged heart strings, acutely firing synapses and hot breath, while Valles is more abstruse and belaboured, as we “hear” a room being occupied and within it, a decrepit piano and more lively acoustic guitar serving as distractions.
[Release page] Talvihorros is fresh off the Descent into Delta album, a plunge well worth taking, and Damian Valles the unexpected, incisive deconstruction of select modernist composers of Nonparallel (in Four Movements). Sometime thereabouts, Textura, the enthusiastic, online electronic music magazine, asked them to split an album for its third-ever in-house label release.
Talvihorros—London’s Ben Chatwin—created the two-part ”From Within a Hollow Body” and Valles a single, twenty-minute piece named for the ”Hollow Earth Theory” of fictive and conspiratorial renown. Chatwin uses and abuses acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin and home made and vintage electronics, and joining him is Anais Lalange on viola for the first half. Valles, residing in central Ontario, prefers to accompany his electric guitar with piano and field recordings. Mastered by James Plotkin and adorned with mossy, deep forest photography by Jürgen Heckel, the bundle is an otherwise odd match, really. Talvihorros fills his hollow body with tugged heart strings, acutely firing synapses and hot breath, while Valles is more abstruse and belaboured, as we “hear” a room being occupied and within it, a decrepit piano and more lively acoustic guitar serving as distractions. There is however a lovely, unobtrusive drone undertone, like an orchestra tuning up. Perhaps we’re hearing Valles’ thought process while working on Nonparallel.
The title of the album makes the pair seem a better fit than the actual music. Chatwin takes us deeply inside, while Valles remains inscrutable.
Monuments and Ruins is available on Textura. [Release page | Bandcamp]
