SHEFFIELD: Bishops' House

Thursday 27th June, 2024

7:00pm

Event information

Guitarist, singer, improviser 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. 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.”

Prior to his move to France in 2011, Chenaux was a key figure in Toronto's fertile avant/improv music scene throughout the 1990s and 2000s, releasing a solo album of instrumental improv guitar in 1999 and co-founding the experimental music label Rat-drifting in 2001, which documents a dynamic cross-section of iconoclastic Toronto experimental music projects, including several ensembles in which Chenaux has also figured as a member: The Draperies, The Reveries, The Guayaveras, The Marmots, Allison Cameron Band, Drumheller, and Nightjars. Previously (1988-1993) he was the guitarist/vocalist of Toronto postpunk group Phleg Camp and the related duo Lifelikeweeds.

Chenaux's first album as a singer-songwriter was Dull Lights , released on Constellation in 2006; a consistently acclaimed, highly original solo discography has unfolded since then: Sloppy Ground (2008); Warm Weather With Ryan Driver (2010); Guitar & Voice (2012); Skullsplitter (2015); Slowly Paradise (2018); Say Laura (2022); and the Eric Chenaux Trio's Delights Of My Life (2024). He has featured on a range of collaborative records issued by other labels through this same span, including Okraïna, Avatar, Ulyssa, Grapefruit and Three:four. He has performed and recorded with countless artists, including Ryan Driver, Sandro Perri, Eloïse Decazes, Michelle McAdorey, DD Dorvillier, Martin Arnold, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, Pauline Oliveros, John Oswald, Michael Snow, Bass Clef, Brodie West, Han Bennink, Christine Abdelnour, Michael Moore, Josephine Foster, Martin Tetrault, Wilbert De Joode, Gareth Davis, Jacob Wren, Norberto Lobo, and many more. Chenaux also composes for film and contemporary dance, including a long-standing association with conceptual filmmaker Eric Cazdyn for his solo music, and in a recurring collaboration with multi-media and sound installation artist Marla Hlady.

Eric Chenaux Trio releases Delights Of My Life (Constellation/Murailles Music) with Ryan Driver (Wurlitzer) and Philippe Melanson (electric percussion) in spring 2024 .

Hearing Things

'Hearing Things' play a piece inspired by Charlemagne Palestine’s Strumming Music.

Five guitarists will interpret this monumental piece of maximalist minimalism. Repeated strumming, cascading overtones and generous reverberations. So much repetition. So little variation. So much sound.

Repetition
Repetition
Repetition

Bring your bears.