Sonar - Black Light (2015)

Steve:

Much of the beauty in the natural world adheres to mathematical principles. The layman's view of mathematics is often that of cold, purely intellectual theoretical concepts with no relation to the real world, but in reality the opposite is true. The arrangement and proportion of branches on a tree, the logarithmic growth spiral of a nautilus shell, and even patterns that seem random all can be expressed in terms of mathematical functions. While it is beyond my level of education to fully elaborate on this concept, suffice to say that I believe in what is often called "mathematical beauty". While a mathematical function can't guarantee "beauty" (however you define that), sometimes natural phenomena are as fascinating and beautiful as they are precisely because of their mathematical nature.

Some proponents of the minimalist school of music have attempted to take a methodical, mathematical approach to composition to see what kind of aesthetic beauty could be achieved by such means. One key piece of the puzzle was provided by Terry Riley, with his composition "In C" (1964), which combined 53 separate repeated musical phrases of varying length, overlapping each other continuously and at varying intervals, creating different combinations of rhythm and pitch to produce an ever-changing mosaic of sound.  

This approach to music-making greatly influenced certain sectors of progressive rock, notably King Crimson, particularly in their 1980s lineup with Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Bill Bruford joining bandleader Robert Fripp (see the songs "Discipline" and "Frame by Frame" for examples of this influence). Applied to a rock context, the idea of overlapping dissimilar phrases to create asynchronous clusters that gradually merge to create unexpected melodies and themes turned into what became known as "math rock".  As with any sub-genre of music, math rock can be either very exciting or very boring, depending not only on the listener's tastes but also on the artistic acumen of the musical ensemble. In the end, pure mathematics can't create a convincing rock performance - energy and "feel" are equally important.

Enter Sonar, a Swiss 4-piece ensemble of 2-guitar/bass/drums that aims at mathematical purity that feels loose while formally being tight as a drum. Led by Stephan Thelen (guitar), Sonar performs meticulously composed mathematical constructs, but these pieces are given life through extensive rehearsal and live performance. Thus, it's not just the notes on the page that are in the composition, but how the pieces live and breathe in performance. Fittingly, all the pieces on Black Light (their third album) are played live, with each instrument claiming an equal space in the mix, with no special effects apart from the natural acoustics of the room they're playing in.  

Another striking feature of Sonar's music is its tonality. The guitars and the bass are all played in an odd tuning, with the strings tuned to tritones (augmented 4ths), one of the most dissonant intervals in Western music. When I took music theory in college, I would get points off on my homework if I put a tritone interval into my harmonic exercise! In Sonar's music, this tuning ensures that few of the simple figures that make up the pieces contain standard major/minor scale elements; instead, there is chromatic and tritonal movement. If you're a King Crimson fan, you've doubtless heard many melodies of this sort already ("Lark's Tongues in Aspic, Part Two", for example). 

Black Light contains six tracks each lasting 5-10 minutes, and each offering a variation on the band's methodology. The opening track, "Enneagram", offers a good summary of what they're about. Following a quiet introductory drone, the two guitarists begin their complementary palm-muted and plucked harmonic phrases, before the bass and drums enter to slice up the phrase into quirky and unexpected rhythmic chunks. The piece develops slowly over the course of 9 minutes, varying the beat and the guitar themes ever so slightly while maintaining a consistent overall groove. "Orbit 5.7", "Angular Momentum", and "Critical Mass" are all composed using the same general strategy, but with varying moods. For example, "Orbit 5.7", although melodically similar to "Enneagram", offers more space and more atmospheric guitar tones, befitting its planetary title. 

The two shortest pieces, "Black Light" and "String Geometry", change up the formula a bit, offering two relatively straightforward King Crimson-like instrumentals, both with their general ensemble sound intact. "Black Light" itself is their own spin on the likes of Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic", with its heavy riffing and less tangled ensemble interplay. "String Geometry", on the other hand, sounds more like their take on Crimson's "Discipline" (or for a more obscure example, "The ConstruKction of Light"), a briskly paced, more rhythmically consistent piece that highlights the harmony of the two guitars rather than the complex webs of the longer pieces.

I got to see Sonar perform live at ProgDay 2017, and I was struck by the interaction between the band members on stage. They were clearly well-rehearsed and used most of their energy to watch and listen to their bandmates, truly operating together as a unit. On this occasion, the "unit" was joined onstage by legendary guitarist David Torn for the second half of the performance. While Torn's role seemed to be simply creating weird sounds and solos on top of the band's tight machinery (which was fine, but admittedly it got a bit loud), the union apparently was fruitful enough to inspire the expanded lineup to record together as "Sonar & David Torn", producing four albums together as of this writing. I have not heard any of these yet, but I look forward to seeing how they fare creatively together in the studio.

Dan: 

I never would have guessed that the mathematical foundation explained by Steve was behind the music on Black Light. I've played the album several times over the previous five months and enjoyed the quartet's creations. I could hear the influence of King Crimson's Larks' Tongues and their albums Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. "Angular Phenomenon" is the most Fripp-like track on Black Light, but "Critical Mass" is also indebted to Fripp.

I also related to the concept of pulse, which is a foundation of many artists and albums I like: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, Philip Glass's Glassworks and Koyaanisqatsi, Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air and Shri Camel, and many of Anthony Braxton's compositions in the jazz world. Almost all rock and jazz music is rooted in rhythm, which is probably traceable to biological routines of human life like heartbeats and breaths, but also paced by mechanical and electronic devices. We don't often reflect on the reasons for pulse, but it seems inherent to everything we do. In turn, music of almost any genre is based on repetition and pulsation.

Tonally, Black Light reminds me of drummer Jerry Granelli's V16 band, especially their double live album, The Sonic Temple. Jerry died a couple of years ago at age 80. V16 are not as precise as the Swiss timekeepers of Sonar (they drift more than they march), but they're configured the same and generate the same deep sounds from their axes.