Black Light Archive

Sonar – Black Light – Cuneiform

by Audiophile Audition | Feb 11, 2016 | Pop/Rock/World CD Reviews

A Swiss rock instrumental quartet governed by the “less is more” philosophy. Sonar – Black Light [TrackList follows] – Cuneiform, Rune 414, 41:23 [10/16/15] ****1/2: (Stephan Thelen – electric tritone guitar; Bernhard Wagner – electric tritone guitar; Christian Kuntner – electric tritone bass; Manuel Pasquinelli – drums) The Swiss instrumental quartet SONAR (short for SONic ARchitecture) is a group with a mission. This is a guitar ensemble which doesn’t do things representative of guitar-centric collectives. For one, they restrain from six-string spectacles (lengthy solos are not common). For another, they fashion material which has set, nearly mathematical, configurations based on tritones (musical intervals comprised of three adjacent whole tones). Despite compositions which have precise structures, SONAR creates music which has body, soul and spirit: this is music which is detailed for specialized performance, but the musicians (Stephan Thelen and Bernhard Wagner on electric tritone guitars; electric tritone bassist Christian Kuntner; and drummer Manuel Pasquinelli) are open to different ideas and sounds, and they keep events from becoming static. Genres can be confining, but if someone needs to do genre simplification, put SONAR in the post-progressive, post-rock, post-minimal musical vein, alongside musicians such as Swiss keyboardist Nik Bärtsch, Belgian cooperative Present, […]