From Three Movements …
The story of Movements and Interludes began in early 2022. Following a two-year hiatus mainly induced by global COVID restrictions, Sonar was brimming with revitalized energy and eager to record a new album alongside long-time collaborator David Torn. Composer and guitarist Stephan Thelen set out not merely to write a collection of standalone tracks, but to construct an expansive, symphonic work in several movements.
To kickstart the creative pipeline, Thelen invited Torn to share recent live guitar loop improvisations. Two pieces, “Tall Tale (Transcribed from the Language of Dream)” and “Maybe the Moon blew a Fuse”, served as starting points and textural foundations for the First and Third Movements.
Soon after, electronic sound architect J. Peter Schwalm joined the fold, adding his signature glitchy, synthetic, yet remarkably organic textures directly from his Mainsound studio in Frankfurt.
At the core of these compositions are Sonar’s sophisticated rhythmic principles, honed over more than a decade of exploration: polyrhythms, odd meters (mainly in 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11), isorhythms, and “Twofold coverings”, a mathematical concept whereby a rhythmic pattern is overlaid by an identical pattern in a higher register played at twice the speed (such as the 3-against-4-against-11 polyrhythm featured in the Third Movement).
The climax of recording arrived in November 2022, when Torn flew in from New York to assemble with the group at Powerplay Studio near Zürich. Screaming through two cranked tube amplifiers and captured by six microphones in Studio A, Torn’s legendary distortion- and feedback-heavy “wall of sound” provided a monumental culmination to a process that had started with loops recorded in New York a year earlier.
… to Movements and Interludes
While the music was originally created for RareNoise Records, the label went on a hiatus lasting into late 2024 in the wake of the pandemic, preventing the album from coming out as initially planned. Trey Gunn’s label 7D Media came to the rescue, releasing the initial edition on CD in 2023 under the title Three Movements, though a vinyl edition remained unavailable at the time.
The new RareNoise release Movements & Interludes provides an opportunity to restore the record to its original intent: The original concept envisaged three movements alternating with two interludes, these last being a dynamic group improvisation and a solo improvisation by David Torn. Spontaneous and improvisational in character, the interludes were meant to complement and balance the structure of the Movements.
In addition to restoring the originally intended track sequence, Stephan Thelen crafted brand-new, personal mixes of the movements that incorporate previously unheard, subtle nuances omitted in the original 2023 release.
The album is further bolstered by two exclusive remixes: Bill Laswell’s Mix Translation and Reconstruction of the First Movement (co-engineered with James Dellatacoma)
and an Ambient Remix of the First Interlude by Thelen.
Spanning four sides of a double LP, as well as being made available on CD and digital download exclusively on RareNoise Records, this release presents a faithful picture of the group’s vision, completed by the evocative new cover artwork by Petulia Mattioli.
