Sonar is minimalist band from Switzerland that constructs evolving grooves with the occasional left turn. Sounds an awful lot like I’m describing Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, doesn’t it? But instead of this quartet centered on a piano, there are two guitars (Stephan Thelen, Bernhard Wagner), along with Christian Kuntner (electric bass) and Manuel Pasquinelli (drums).
For their latest disc Vortex, the quartet has become a quintet. Sonar’s last release Black Light (2015) stoked the imagination of avant guitar king Henry Kaiser who loved the tritone tunings employed “in a really interesting way.” He called up his esteemed colleague David Torn with the idea of Torn producing their new album. After one listen, Torn was on board and the original plan for Torn to guest his guitar on a few tracks quickly turned into a full blown collaboration, because the two sides clicked so well once they got into the studio.
It’s a curious notion to improve a band with two guitarists by adding a third (although arguably that worked for the Eagles and the Doobie Brothers), but Torn certainly had no redundancy in mind; he brought the dirt under the fingernails, the dusty grit on a camel after a Saharan dust storm and the jagged terrain of a gravel road. Toss in Torn’s industrial textures and Sonar suddenly sounds like what my friend describes as “80’s era King Crimson with a jazzy space-ambient twist.”
Torn doesn’t mess with the foundation of Sonar, as it’s structurally sound. In fact, “Part 44” starts out as a shiny, math-rock procession that for a while acts as a straight continuation of Black Light. Instead, Torn lets the grime accumulate, his guitar growing with urgency and culminating into a shrieking, single note extended out for miles. It’s clear already that this partnership is going to work.
There are other reasons to like Vortex aside from Torn’s acerbic ways and those tritones. Kuntner leaves huge bass footprints on “Red Shift” (as well as on “Vortex”) that give the song heft even as Thelen and Wagner stay lithe. But when the bridge comes, Torn steps out front and wrests insistent emotions from his axe like no one else can. A lot of air fills up “Monolith” initially but as the song unfolds with snowballing tension, competing streams of rhythms are revealed; there’s a certain complexity to Pasquinelli’s work that he makes seem simpler than it really is.
Make no mistake, the producer impacts every song, and probably makes the impact larger by carefully picking and choosing his spots while allowing the band to create the setting first. He glides in with soaring distorted tones for “Waves and Particles” sustains them over the interlocking guitars of Thelen and Wagner. Torn picks up momentum during “Vortex” and just as he is about to break wide open, he stops to allow the underlying groove reassert itself and when it kicks it into a higher gear led by Pasquinelli, Torn returns with more of his ‘wounded animal’ cries.
Lastly, the first half of “Lookface!” has more density than the prior five tracks and the dark, aggressive bent is fertile ground for Torn’s brand of shredding. In this case, his brand is spitting his notes back in many different contorted forms and playing detuned Gamelan instruments. But just as fascinating is the gradation down to a soft landing that happens over the course of the song’s second half.
Most successful collaborations are forged when both sides learn to adjust their approaches around each other but it never feels like any adjustment was necessary for either Sonar or David Torn because they complement each other uncommonly well. Each simply does what they’re so good at doing at the same time and the combined music falls together as naturally as leaves to a tree.
Vortex is now available for sale courtesy of Rare Noise Records.
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