New York artist and composer Gryphon Rue likens his latest album to a viewfinder: “layers come into view, are obscured, and reemerge.” Begun in late 2020 as a series of intuitive patterns for multi-tracked Farfisa organ, harmonium, and modular synth, he later wove in field recordings from Puebla, Mexico and rolling thunder (“and a truly magical coyote visitation”) captured in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The result is a beguiling suite of elusive instrumentals combining electronic instrumentation with the natural world. Rue cites a fascination with the mimetic potential of electronic sounds – their ability to suggest biological actions or molecular events, from insects building mounds to nervous system synapses firing. Above all, the music was made “with people’s pleasure in mind.”
A Spirit Appears To A Pair Of Lovers unspools a saga of transformations via modal voyaging, devotional drone, mantric percussion, percolating circuitry, and amniotic ambience, shaded in a nuanced haze of threshold consciousness. Rue’s vision of “keeping the human hand in electronic music” remains constant throughout, a biofeedback between chaos and control, dream states and design. It’s a music both versatile and visual (all 10 tracks are accompanied by original videos by different artists), cerebral but celestial, born of and in thrall to our garden of earthly delights.
Cover image: Nathlie Provosty's ink drawing on photograph of Alexander Graham Bell kissing Mabel Hubbard Gardiner Bell through a tetrahedral kite in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 1903.
pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gryphon-rue-a-spirit-appears-to-a-pair-of-lovers/
released August 26, 2022
Gryphon Rue - Farfisa compact fast 2/c, Modular synth, Harmonium, Space Echo, Mellotron, Casio SA-20, Electric guitar, DRM16, Lyra-8
Mustafa Khaliq Ahmed - Congas (2, 3, 7), Electronic drums (2, 3)
Eliot Krimsky - Piano (1), Jupiter-8 (5)
Nathlie Provosty - Hollers (3)
Benjamin Katz - Farfisa (4)
Nic Principe - Tape and disc treatments (6)
Will Epstein - Casio (7)
Mastered by Joe Lambert
Mixed by Gryphon Rue and Nicholas Principe at People Teeth
Artwork by Nathlie Provosty
Design by Siiri Tännler
UK copies:
allnightflightrecords.com/collections/frontpage/products/gryphon-rue-a-spirit-appears-to-a-pair-of-lovers
