Looking back at an unsung hero from Warp Records’ seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation series. Once mentioned alongside contemporaries Aphex Twin, Autechre, Luke Vibert, and Mike Paradinas, Yorkshire-based producer […]
5 Selects: Anenon (Tonal Union)
Join us this Friday at Sound & Vision for a listening party and solo performance from Anenon aka Brian Allen Simon.
Anenon is the ongoing solo studio and live project of multi-instrumentalist / electronic artist Brian Allen Simon, who since 2010 has released multiple albums and EPs to critical acclaim, including the highly revered Tongue (2018) on Friends of Friends, and, more recently, The Side I Never See (2021) with Scottish pianist Hugh Small on Jonny Nash’s Melody As Truth. Last November, Simon returned with a new album Moons Melt Milk Light, which bears his most personal, expressive, and arresting works to date. While previous solo albums set his tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, and piano against a backdrop of electronic instrumentation and shifting ambient textures, Moons Melt Milk Light strips all of that away leaving just Simon’s raw, emotive improvisations alongside a few field recordings of gentle dinner conversation, crickets, birds, and water flowing.
“I feel a kinetic and messy honesty that doesn’t exist in any of the other music I’ve ever made. There is also a sense of being settled, of calm. There is no faking it here.” – Brian Allen Simon
From Tonal Union: “‘Moons Melt Milk Light’ is direct, efficient, and unwavering in its immediacy… The album’s undeniably emotive and nocturnal title track follows with sharp poignancy, inspired directly from an ongoing deep connection and dialogue to his LA surroundings. ‘I would take evening walks in my neighborhood, and I felt in awe of what I deemed an autumnal milky quality of light at dusk. This light felt like a seemingly unending flash, and was something that I wanted to evoke in the playing and meshing of instruments.'”
This Friday 6-9pm, In Sheep’s Clothing and Tonal Union will be presenting a listening party at Sound & Vision ROW DTLA celebrating Moons Melt Milk Light. Join us for a listening session along with a special solo saxophone performance from Anenon. In anticipation of the event, Anenon shared five inspirations with us along with some personal notes about each selection.
David S. Ware Quartet – Ganesh Sound (2007)
David S. Ware has gradually become one of my favorite saxophonists. What once sounded as ferocious and aggressive to me, steely and sharp, now hits me with a sound of fierce tenderness, a player unafraid to speak his truth in virtuosic technique through his horns. David simply has a sound all his own, and whether or not one likes his music, there is absolutely no denying his energy and devotion to the craft. In his life David was a proponent of yoga, meditation, and spiritual practice, and his attitudes towards these subjects at one point seeped into my own practice of my horn, as well as into my devotion to yoga. “Ganesh Sound”, a live recording from the last performance of his great quartet that included Matthew Shipp and William Parker, as well as a rotation of different drummers over the years—here Guillermo E. Brown is monumental. A fairly straightforward bass pattern in c-minor carries the structures in which David sings through his tenor with an agility and power that most will never reach on their instruments. Shipp’s notorious cluster chord harmonics build the tension even further, while Parker and Brown ooze in and out of each other, providing a gigantic and elastic rhythmic backbone for the group.
Richard Jobson – The Kiss, The Dance and the Death (2006)
When I made The Side I Never See (Melody As Truth), a collaboration with Hugh Small of Vazz, the two of us mostly spent time corresponding about literature rather than music, and more precisely Marguerite Duras. We were both readers and acolytes of her work, and then Hugh turned me onto Richard Jobson. Jobson, a Scotsman like Hugh, and formerly of The Skids who is currently a film director, is clearly a Duras fanatic as well, and he released these serenely odd interpretations that are more like ad-libs rather than readings of Duras’ seminal work Le Vice Consul on the record Ten-Thirty On A Summer Night. Completely strange, funny, disturbing and beautiful scene setting work put to disc thanks to the legendary Les Disques du Crépuscule.
Burial – Stolen Dog (2013)
I’m a fan of the classics, and “Stolen Dog” is to me, Burial’s quintessential compact track—hooky yet dark melodics, crackly textures floating in and out, and with a simple 4/4 beat that somehow stays interesting the entire time. Burial’s music remains an inspiration of a certain type of musical energy to strive for in my own work.
Charlie Haden, Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti – For Turiya (1981)
This is actually one of the only songs I know how to play on the saxophone. A piece by Charlie Haden crystallized into the air here by this special trio. Tender, spiritual and internal, there is something about this melody that opens my heart. I put this on when I don’t know what else to listen to and it acts as reset. While the version in duet form with Alice Coltrane has a certain intimate grandeur to it, Alice’s harp cascades flowing on top of Charlie’s rooted tree bass, I prefer this almost sadder rendition. Gismonti in a deep and rare sparse mood on the piano, Garbarek in stellar soprano form, Haden holding it all tight and together.
HTRK – Venus In Leo (2019)
HTRK are just so deep into their own language, and that is something I look for in other musicians. Despite making more or less pop music, they somehow don’t sound like anyone else. “Venus in Leo” is peak pop minimalism with a touch of free form qualities, especially in Nigel’s scratchy and enveloping guitar playing, chordal waves over a simple bass line and minimal 808 stylings. Jonnine’s lyrics are too perfect, and the whole thing just has this dark and sexy quality that is hard to put into words.