@eric_chenaux est une créature humaine absolument unique. Sa voix de contre-ténor porte des mélodies suaves inspirées du jazz moderne, de la soul, de la pop raffinée. Ses tempos sont généralement lents, immanquablement délicieux, nourrissants, lumineux. De chanteur rompu au post-punk, il a découvert jadis le jazz contemporain et l’improvisation libre pour s’y consacrer entièrement jusqu’à ce qu’on lui demande des chansons plus cadrées.
Entrevue réalisée par Alain Brunet @ab.alain.brunet sur
#experimental
#contemporain
#jazz
#soul
Final call for this great lineup! Get your tickets on Fatsoma
In an age where traditional musics are dug up, polished and sold in increasingly banal forms, Harry Gorski-Brown’s melange of studio and live recordings, text-to-speech voices, deep drones and an oddball sense of humour feels truly radical. This comes as no surprise, given his latest album found a home on Scotland’s GLARC label. His recordings are largely of Scottish-Gaelic folk songs, arranged for pipes, voice, bouzouki, fiddle and electronics. They bubble and drone, with screeches of harsh noise interlocking with beautiful traditional melodies; neither anachronistic nor passé. He was recently an artist-in-residency at Nonclassical and has performed at the likes of Counterflows and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Eric Chenaux is one of Canada’s most respected and long-standing experimental guitar players and songwriters, starting with legendary Toronto punk band Phleg Camp in the early 90s and tirelessly expanding his musical vocabulary and reach in countless improv, avant-folk, damaged jazz and contemporary music ensembles throughout the 2000s. Since 2006, Constellation has been home to Chenaux’s more overtly song-based work, his clear voice and erudite lyricism guided by an utterly unique guitar technique and a deep immersion in pop and folk traditions from medieval to post-modern.
“I’m in love with Eric Chenaux’s Guitar & Voice... Whether Chenaux is delivering compelling images atop gentle guitar solos or producing long, airy drones, the sound throughout is intoxicating.” - Stereophile
w/
Sara Mokrani
Sara Mokrani is a French-Algerian composer and sound designer who explores generative sounds from modular synths along with dreamy melodies played on organs, piano and flutes. Inspired by medieval harmonies, her practice focuses on complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based melodies that create a minimalist sound architecture allowing us to explore the purest emotions.
This Sunday, May 3rd at @cafeotodalston@eric_chenaux + @harrygorskibrown & Ensemble Irsahm
With 3 out of 4 shows at the @digthattreasure Festival sold out this is your last chance to join us this weekend. Only 30 tickets left, get one before they're gone, available via Dice.
Eric Chenaux was absolute magic at our show last year at The Old Church and we're very excited to have him back, don't miss out!
Guitarist, singer, improvisor and composer Eric Chenaux has released eight full-length solo albums of avant-pop and out-ballads that juxtapose crooning vocals with bent-and-fried guitar, all on Montréal-based imprint Constellation Records @cstrecords
He has been called “a musician like no other” by Tiny Mix Tapes, “one of the all-time great singing voices in popular music” by The Guardian, and The Quietus has praised his solo artistry as “stunningly beautiful, genuinely inimitable, whose reputation will only grow with time.” Gracing the cover of The Wire magazine in 2017, its feature article declared: “Chenaux succeeds in generating an astonishing array of timbres. A singer and songwriter possessed of angelic sweetness and clarity accompanying himself with largely improvised, visceral guitar textures that seem intent on undermining and obscuring his own songs. It’s the need to communicate tussling with the urge to obfuscate; lucidity versus opacity; form against chaos.”
Support comes from @harrygorskibrown Scottish-Gaelic folk songs, arranged for pipes, voice, bouzouki, fiddle and electronics. His songs bubble and drone, with screeches of harsh noise interlocking with beautiful traditional melodies; neither anachronistic nor passé.
and opening the night are Ensemble Irsahm
a Belgian group formed of musicians from Créahmbxl (Création et Handicap Mental) and IRSA (Royal Institute for the Deaf and Blind). Together, the group reinterprets the music of Saint-Saens, Hildegard von Bingen, Bach and more with arrangements built around each of the musicians’ strengths including, but not limited to, clarinet, guitar, keyboard, and voice.
This is the group’s first performance outside of Belgium, a rare and special treat for the audience at Dig That Treasure!
AGENDA | Improvised jazz, psychedelic love songs, deranged soul, @eric_chenaux 's music flows without tension or resolution, but like a lively, capricious stream, winding through a thousand turns and carrying along a thousand impurities. Solo across the Channel, then on a Canadian tour accompanied by longtime collaborator Ryan Driver on levitating keyboards.
→ On Tour :
28/04 • Birmingham (UK) • Artefact
29/04 • Oxford (UK) • @commongroundoxford (prom. @divineschism )
30/04 • Coventry (UK) • Just Dropped In (prom. Sink or Swim Promotions)
01/05 • Manchester (UK) • Skribble presents, St Margaret’s church
02/05 • Newcastle (UK) • @thelubberfiend
03/05 • Londres (UK) • Dig That Treasure! Festival, @cafeotodalston
14/05 • Toronto (CA) • Standard Time w/ Ryan Driver
15/05 • Peterborough (CA) • Sadleir House w/ Ryan Driver
17/05 • Victoriaville (CA) • @fimav_victo w/ Ryan Driver
cc @cstrecords
Eric Chenaux is a Canadian guitarist, songwriter, singer and sound sculptor. He has released seven solo albums of experimental song on the Montréal-based imprint Constellation, charting an adventurous and uncompromising path through avant-folk, out-jazz and pop composition, increasingly rooted in a unique and elemental juxtaposition of fried, frazzled, semi-improvised guitar and smooth, clear tenor balladry. He has been called “a musician like no other” by Tiny Mix Tapes; his solo albums praised by The Quietus as
“stunningly beautiful, genuinely inimitable, whose reputation will only grow with time.” Gracing the cover of The Wire magazine in 2017, the feature article declared: “Chenaux succeeds in generating an astonishing array of timbres. A singer and songwriter possessed of angelic sweetness and clarity accompanying himself with largely improvised, visceral guitar textures that seem intent on undermining and obscuring his own songs. It’s the need to communicate tussling with the urge to obfuscate; lucidity versus opacity; form against chaos.”
He has performed and recorded with countless artists, including Ryan Driver, Sandro Perri, Eloïse Decazes, Michelle McAdorey, Nick Fraser, Martin Arnold, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, Pauline Oliveros, John Oswald, Michael Snow, Brodie West, Han Bennink, Christine Abdelnour, Michael Moore, Josephine Foster, Martin Tetrault, Wilbert De Joode, Gareth Davis, Jacob Wren, Norberto Lobo, Nathaniel Mann and many more.
Come and see Eric at St Margaret’s Church, Whalley Range this Friday May 1st. He’s not to be missed. Tickets on RA (link in bio).
A week today, 3 brilliant artists, all playing on one bill. It should be fantastic!
In an age where traditional musics are dug up, polished and sold in increasingly banal forms, Harry Gorski-Brown’s melange of studio and live recordings, text-to-speech voices, deep drones and an oddball sense of humour feels truly radical. This comes as no surprise, given his latest album found a home on Scotland’s GLARC label. His recordings are largely of Scottish-Gaelic folk songs, arranged for pipes, voice, bouzouki, fiddle and electronics. They bubble and drone, with screeches of harsh noise interlocking with beautiful traditional melodies; neither anachronistic nor passé. He was recently an artist-in-residency at Nonclassical and has performed at the likes of Counterflows and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Eric Chenaux is one of Canada’s most respected and long-standing experimental guitar players and songwriters, starting with legendary Toronto punk band Phleg Camp in the early 90s and tirelessly expanding his musical vocabulary and reach in countless improv, avant-folk, damaged jazz and contemporary music ensembles throughout the 2000s. Since 2006, Constellation has been home to Chenaux’s more overtly song-based work, his clear voice and erudite lyricism guided by an utterly unique guitar technique and a deep immersion in pop and folk traditions from medieval to post-modern.
“I’m in love with Eric Chenaux’s Guitar & Voice... Whether Chenaux is delivering compelling images atop gentle guitar solos or producing long, airy drones, the sound throughout is intoxicating.” - Stereophile
w/
Sara Mokrani
Sara Mokrani is a French-Algerian composer and sound designer who explores generative sounds from modular synths along with dreamy melodies played on organs, piano and flutes. Inspired by medieval harmonies, her practice focuses on complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based melodies that create a minimalist sound architecture allowing us to explore the purest emotions.
Tickets on Fatsoma
Coming up in just 1 month, singular songwriter Eric Chenaux (with Ryan Driver) and experimental guitar maverick Rafael Toral (Drag City Records) co-headline a special TONE concert on May 14th at Standard Time. Local electronic avant pop vibe setter Masahiro Takahashi opens the night in duo with saxophonist Brodie West. Come for the sonic delights, stay for the hang.
$30 Adv in the linktree
8pm
All Ages
See you there!
New art and line-up news for our last show of April - legendary Canadian songwriter Eric Chenaux is joined by Oxford’s warmly delicate songsmith Hugo Manuel for the show at Common Ground on Weds 29th April! A big one for fans of avant-folk and interesting, beautiful songs!
Eric’s songcraft has been described “as delicate and lovely as a rare orchid” and we do agree very much - his slightly off-kilter song structures augmented by his soft distinct vocals. Chenaux’s tunes have the uncanny ability to sound like jazz standards; songs you feel you’ve heard before, though certainly never quite like this. Yet these are of course all originals, compositionally and interpretively, bent through an inimitable avant/out-music lens. Delights Of My Life conveys warm familiarity, shot through with the exuberantly experimental subversion and playful, even mischievous, iconoclasm that continues to mark Chenaux as defiantly, virtuosically, and genially one-of-kind.
Hugo has sporadically played some solo shows over the past couple of years and it’s a delight to see - we first encountered him as the vocalist and songwriter in folk collective Jonquil before he travelled the world with his Balearic tunes as Chad Valley and his new nylon-stringed material has a beautiful warmth to it that is a wonder live!
This is an intimate, all ages, wheelchair accessible show at Common Ground on Weds 29th May and a very rare chance to see both musicians live - music from 8pm #oxford #oxfordmusic #oxfordmusicscene #ericchenaux #divineschism
