Following 2021’s In Love & Fracture, C. Diab (Caton Hower) has announced the release of a new album titled Imerro. The Canadian bowed guitarist and multi-instrumentalist recorded the album in a particularly hot summer in 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, British Columbia. Speaking about the album, Caton comments:
“The idea behind this record was simply ecstatic improvisation, to place myself and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart (Paul) in an area with minimal distraction and provide myself space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music “shows it’s face” as you move along, an instrument being a kind of lightning rod for sonics already existing, and any sonic subject in this session should present itself rather than composing upon hard preconceived notions.
That being said, we didn’t handcuff ourselves by disallowing old ideas, or throwing out melodic sketches from the past. Rather we made room for them to show themselves, or to lend themselves to anything happening in the moment. Over the six days in Cedar, we would work from early in the morning to late at night, with small breaks for food or to occasionally shower with a cold hose in an old chicken shed. The process was simple: I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play, and we would go from there, laying down an idea and moving forward with more ideas and more instrumentation, until we felt the track was full.”
Imerro arrives on February 16th through Tonal Union and to get us enticed Caton has shared the first stunning and enveloping single, ‘Lunar Barge’. Of the track, he says:
“’Lunar Barge’ is a track for a dry, hot night in the forest (which it quite literally was). This was another case of “anything goes”, in that after the initial bass line was recorded, I roamed around the floors of the studio picking up any instrument standing out in the moment, and tried to see if it had anything to say. Some of the rhythm is played with a pair of chopsticks against a piece of wood, and some of the textures incorporate creaking noises from accidental movement. This track flowed easily and was recorded late at night, as we talked about the music of Huun-Huur-Tu, who became the inspiration for the rhythm. Most of our focus on this track was given to the wind instruments, of which we recorded far too much of, and had to whittle down to short, purposeful bursts in order to create the sound of a deep, open space. The title, ‘Lunar Barge’, is a combination of the 18th arcanum of the Tarot’s major arcana (which evokes desire and magical reality of the shadow world), and the Egyptian Solar Barge, on which the ancient sun god Ra was said to “travel through the sky…providing light to the world.”
‘Lunar Barge’ comes paired with a video by Ryan Gordon Flowers and you can watch it below.
