Phon°noir

electro-acoustic // experimental

Distant echoes return with a subdued haze, in an audible maze that approaches your ear. Matthias Grübel’s voice sparingly appears to direct and translate, through his Phon°noir dialect, as songs often build, unfold, surprise and sometimes delight with a scattered, spackled, mysterious transformation of blips, glitches, instrumental and skyward noises that become waves and bursts, then disappear. He credits Leonard Cohen and Four Tet as influences; I agree.

Suspicious, hypnotizing collages of reminiscent tinkerings.
Phon°noir – My Paperhouse On Fire
Phon°noir – The Objects Don’t Need Us

Update! 2008.06.21: Annie points us to an excellent video of the former track:
Phon°noir – My Paperhouse On Fire (video)
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5 Responses to “Phon°noir”

  1. Marc :

    This is ace. It’s like the music that I have going around in my head.

  2. Ryan :

    The music is wonderful, but I become extraordinarily disappointed when he begins singing — especially since he sounds the same in each song on the album and most people I know could write better lyrics than him if given twenty minutes and a restaurant napkin.

  3. Miles Trench :

    Fabulous – love it ! Ambience at its best … :)

  4. Lucas :

    I dig the way these sound percussive next to the long sustained tones in the Susumu Yokota. (I’m listening playlist-style using a prototype greasemonkey version of the new player…)

  5. Alan :

    I usually don’t like ambient/experimental music, but I love these. They have a kind of quiet energy, oxymoronic as that may seem.