‘Absence’ is the absolutely beautiful and celestial new single from Matt McBane‘s highly anticipated Buoy. The new track follows the exhilarating and kaleidoscopic ‘Arpeggiator‘ and the gorgeous and engrossing ‘Eleven Eleven’, which have completely bowled me over.  Described as “a melancholy track for solo piano, synthesizer and disembodied, processed sustain pedal”, ‘Absence’ further showcases McBane’s stylistic versatility and instrumental virtuosity. Listen to it below and grab Buoy when it drops on February 28th through Gradient Music.

Photo: Tommy McAdams

We’ve been eagerly waiting for the release of Matt McBane‘s Buoy since the composer, electronic musician, and violinist announced its release at the tail end of last year, alongside the immersively gorgeous and engrossing single ‘Eleven Eleven’. A record of patterns and ambience for synthesizers and violin, Buoy marks McBane’s first electronic album and first solo album and it sprouted from a 2020 performance at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust curated by Laurie Anderson and Arto Lindsay.

Ahead of the album’s release on February 28th through Gradient Music, McBane has shared a new single titled ‘Arpeggiator’. Speaking about the track, he comments:

“With ‘Arpeggiator’, I imagined an intersection of the classical minimalism of Philip Glass and the minimalist techno of Robert Hood. The result is a continuous flow of repeated arpeggios on the violin and synthesizer over drum machine patterns. These all follow strict additive and subtractive processes, moving from patterns of 3 to 4 to 5, etc and back again. The name ‘Arpeggiator’ is a reference to a standard function of synthesizers to automatically arpeggiate held chords — an easy way to create a seemingly virtuosic cascade of notes. In my piece, these arpeggios are played on the violin (in addition to synthesizer) for an actual virtuosic feat of stamina and concentration imitating the machine-generated notes.”

Listen to ‘Arpeggiator’ below and get ready for an exhilarating and kaleidoscopic ride.

Composer, electronic musician, and violinist Matt McBane has announced the release of a new album. Entitled Buoy, it follows his widely acclaimed Bathymetry, released in 2022, and is both his first electronic album and first solo album. A record of patterns and ambience for synthesizers and violin that sees him play an array of analog synthesizers (modular and fixed), violin, piano and bass guitar, Buoy sprouted from a 2020 performance at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust curated by Laurie Anderson and Arto Lindsay. While Buoy reveals a new facet of McBane’s work, it expands the foundation laid by his previous music, “the patterns and processes of classical minimalism, the sonic manipulation of electronic music, the elemental qualities of fiddle music, emotional nuance, cinematic space, counterpoint, atmosphere”, as the press release describes, “all filtered through the voltages of his synthesizers.”

We’ll have to wait until February 28th for Buoy to be out through Gradient Music but we can already hear the immersively gorgeous and engrossing ‘Eleven Eleven’, which serves as a perfect introduction to the album.