CHATWIN, BEN: Heat & Entropy LP
Ben Chatwin begins his new album with an instrument you’d least expect—a
dulcitone. Created in the late 19th century, the keyboard hits tuning
forks with felt hammers, sounding like an ornate music box. It serves as
the perfect lead in to Heat & Entropy, whose title refers to how
introducing heat (energy) and entropy (chaos) into any given system can
create life, exploring the blurring lines between man and machine. The
first Chatwin album to be recorded domestically, Heat & Entropy
starts a new chapter for the Queensferry, Scotland-based musician. Under
the name Talvihorros, Chatwin is known for his innovative combination
of electronic experimentation and modern classical composition. However,
last year’s The Sleeper Awakes took a left turn and exchanged vanguard
minimalism for enhanced melodics. Heat & Entropy delves further into
this world. The result is an ornate exploration into future
possibilities. On Heat & Entropy, Chatwin
originally intended to use only strings, forcing him to explore
lesser-known instruments. For “Standing Waves,” he attached pieces of
metal, rubber and tape to the piano strings. “The Kraken” uses Terry
Riley’s repetition as a starting point, but leads to distorted vocals
and an intense, hammered dulcimer climax. “Euclidean Plane” incorporates
a bowed mandolin and a three-stringed didley-bow, along with acoustic
guitar and metallophone by Ben’s brother, Jordan Chatwin, who has had no
formal training and learned guitar by ear, playing with unconventional
tunings and chords. Despite the unique sounds
and textures Chatwin found among the strings, the lure of electronics
proved too great. “The album then became about the tensions between the
acoustic, or natural world, and the electronic world” he explains. “For
me this is where the excitement lies…. It creates a unique world of
contrasts and conflicting relationships.” Chatwin
calls Heat & Entropy “an album of contrast, conflict and chaos, but
also of complex relationships.” Melody rises above the maelstrom in
these compositions. It’s an album of experimentation, of delicately
contrasting the organic with the artificial, and ultimately of great
beauty and sophistication. Heat & Entropy marks the emergence of an
incredibly exciting and visionary Scots composer.
Tracklist:
1. Inflexion
2. Gravitational Bodie
3. Standing Waves
4. Phantom Lights
5. Oscillations
6. The Kraken
7. Surface Tension
8. Euclidean Plane
9. Corpseways