Valerian Swing (Italy)

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bUTTONpUSHER PRESENTS

VALERIAN SWING (Italy)

Italian trio Valerian Swing return with Liminal - their boundary-pushing fourth album which absorbs and unites elements of math and post rock, contemporary jazz, film music and grime.

As the feature on Badman (Ting) from Grammy award-winning UK Grime artist Flowdan might suggest, it would be misleading to label Valerian Swing as a rock band at this stage of their career. The trio’s fourth album Liminal is threaded with influences from contemporary film score, jazz and electronic music, as well as math and post rock.

Such ambition and eclecticism has certainly paid off, as this expansive and cinematic record positions Valerian Swing as one of the most exciting contemporary acts in Europe.

It’s been seven years since the band’s previous album, Nights (2017). In that time, the Italian three piece have continued to expand and develop their palette, incorporating elements of film music, EDM, grime, chamber music and contemporary jazz alongside math and post rock. When listening, one can hear echoes of artists like GoGo Penguin, Badbadnotgood, Jon Hopkins and Jóhann Jóhannsson alongside occasional glimpses of Battles, Kayo Dot and Italian progressive rock.

“The aesthetic of this record comes partly from the necessity of working as a band in two different countries,” explains guitarist Stefano Villani. “We live in Italy and Germany and it is not easy at all to meet all together to rehearse. This is why we started to produce massively with Ableton and exchange projects with each other.”

“It only took a short while to see how this change in process led us to a different view on our music. We felt a need to radically change our sound and make a step away from the ‘math-rock’ label that we had in the past, and to move forward in a more contemporary and experimental direction. Most of all, I feel this album is completely artistically free. We are proud of it.”

This new, expansive mindset is not difficult to identify: Liminal is an album where dub co-exists with post-rock melodies, where rapid-fire jazz drumming is set alongside rich orchestration, and shimmering synths snake between layers of bass, drums and guitar. It’s a wonderful marriage of the electronic, synthetic and acoustic elements, a record operating at the edge of things, pushing out into new forms of art and music.

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