Description
The follow-up to his acclaimed Constellation debut Third Album released in lockdown spring 2020, Markus Floats returns with Fourth Album, pushing the Montreal-based artists distinct abstract electronic compositions into newly evocative terrain (while preserving his record-titling literalism). Faced with another couple of years spent unexpectedly, though not unfamiliarly, secluded and studio-bound, working on both paintings and music, Floats emerged by the end of 2022 with a set of tracks about 60% finished and a determined desire to throw off the shackles of distancing and isolation. I had always thought about Markus Floats as a solo project but I am wrong about that. Fourth Album is about asking for help, inviting in, and making a home. Its about trust, exploration, and the effort of letting go. Sharing his in-progress recordings with a trio of close friends and collaborators from the powerhouse free music ensemble Egyptian Cotton Arkestra, each of these players then spent a day improvising to the tracks at Montreals Hotel2Tango studio. With violin by Ari Swan, saxophone and mbira by James Goddard, and guitar and drums by Lucas Huang, Floats stitched their extemporized instruments back into his compositional process. The result is a fluid, lustrous, dynamic expansion of his sound and structure that continues to strike the ineffable balance of abstraction and soulfulness rightly highlighted and celebrated in the critical response to Third Album. Fourth Album sustains much of that previous works enchanting equanimity, while inviting a bit more restlessness, accident and grit, with the incorporation of acoustic instruments and improvisation melding Floats own background in Electroacoustic Studies and Jazz Performance more than ever before. For fans of Terry Riley, Klein, Nosaj Thing, Floating Points, Deru, Joshua Abrams/Town And Country, Flying Lotus, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Sarah Hennies, Jan Jelinek.
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