“Dark twin, meet your light twin.” That’s how musicians and best friends John Niekrasz and Luke Wyland were first introduced to each other in 2007. It’s an apt description of the duality and synergy of their musical project. Using keys/electronics and percussion, the two maximize the duo configuration to create music at once primal and futuristic. Overflowing with polyrhythms and layers of microtonal melodies, the two suites on Methods Body’s self-titled debut conjure a sense of traveling through space and time to a prismatic, post-human landscape. As the artists themselves put it: "There’s a telepathic highway between us that allows for these spontaneous compositions to emerge. That’s definitely the foundation for our work."
"In Methods Body’s music, nothing feels fixed in place. The drums-and-electronics duo’s debut album is as slippery as the deck of a boat in a storm: Muscular rhythms in strange time signatures, microtonal prepared-piano riffs, droning feedback—they all careen back and forth, colliding, breaking into pieces. The result is a gnarled hybrid of free improv, minimalist composition, and dance music that advances in fits and starts, repetitive until it is not, knotty until it turns unexpectedly smooth." – Philip Sherburne/Pitchfork
METHODS BODY creates original sound art and music using custom tuning systems, involuted polyrhythms, and the cadences of language. John Niekrasz (Ecstatic Peace, ESP-Disk') and Luke Wyland (The Leaf Label, Hometapes, Crammed Records) use bespoke live-sampling technologies and meta-cognitive compositions to inhabit waves of subliminal melody and deep, uncanny grooves. They build on the non-traditional tunings of Terry Riley, the experimental energy of Éliane Radigue and Silver Apples, and the refracted electronics of Aphex Twin to create a sonic language completely their own. Together, Wyland and Niekrasz have been pushing the bounds of rhythm and melody for more than a dozen years. Their duos, AU and Why I Must Be Careful, were lauded as groundbreaking and breathtaking. Both Niekrasz and Wyland are idiosyncratic innovators on their instruments and use performance as an arena for legitimate connection and energetic exchange. Methods Body’s first full-length album is born from long-term composing and recording sessions held in old-growth forests and remote deserts.
credits
released May 22, 2020
Formats: LP/digital
Catalog #: BNSD047
Distribution by Forced Exposure
Cover art by Brenna Murphy
A collaborative release from Methods Body, Beacon Sound, and New Amsterdam
I love the bass grooves and danceable beats (or very head nodding on the train - lots of swaying too) along with the space, sparse and a third word tunes and lots of variation that keeps everything moving. James Hastings
The latest from UK experimentalist Marcus Hamblett occupies serene musical territory, its songs flirting with jazz & electroacoustic music. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 11, 2019