SONAR -- Presskit

PRESSKIT SONAR sonar_home

It was 2010 that the group SONAR was born. The two Zürich-based guitarists Stephan and Bernhard met one evening when Stephan was playing and Bernhard was in the audience. They immediately found that they shared many common interests, so it wasn’t long before they started playing together.
They key idea for the musical concept came, when Stephan remembered that he once tuned his guitar in tritones in order to perform a piece that otherwise would have technically impossible to play. They found that the natural harmonics of this tuning had a very unique, mystic sound quality.
The next step was also rather bold, at least for these two individuals, who had played extensively with effects and loops all their life: they decided to put away all their electronic gadgets and concentrate on the clean sound of an electric guitar.
Further decisions were to radically concentrate on polyrhythms and isorhythms and to avoid intentional virtuosity in favor of group interplay.
Knowing that Sonar needed a very deep bass sound to counterbalance the high-pitched guitar harmonics, Stephan invited his friend Christian Kuntner from Radio Osaka, a band they had both played in.
Bernhard had met a young drummer, Manuel Pasquinelli, at one of Nik Bärtsch’s workshops, thinking that he would be the perfect drummer to play the polymetric beats that they were imagining.
At the end of their first rehearsal, it was perfectly clear that this project would be very exciting and that exactly the right people had found each other.
After about half a year of rehearsals, Sonar played a few concerts in Switzerland and went straight to the studio to record « A Flaw of Nature », an album that was released in 2012 on Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin Rhythm Records label. Thanks to Nik’s connections around the globe, Steve Feigenbaum, head of Cuneiform Records (USA) became aware of Sonar and eventually signed them to his label. Thanks to the wide distributional net of Cuneiform, Sonar’s 2014 album « Static Motion » and their 2015 follow-up « Black Light » (produced by David Bottrill) led to international acclaim, dozens of excellent reviews and concerts in the USA, UK, Germany, France, Austria, Rumania and (in 2017) Japan.
SONAR recorded their new album VORTEX in February 2017. We had the great pleausure of having David Torn producing and guest-starring and the results blew our minds (hopefully, they will blow yours too!). Thank you, David! Dude! Also thanks to D. James Goodwin, who did a great job as a sound engineer. The album is going to be released in January 2018 by the London based Label RareNoise.
The Band had a fantastic tour of Japan that started April 17 in Kyoto and ended April 23 in Yokohama.
End of august, beginning of september 2017, the band will be on tour in CANADA and the US (Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Chicago, Kingston, Chapel Hill (prog-day Festival).

BIOGRAFIES

Stephan Thelen
Guitar
Stephan Thelen composes all pieces with few exceptions, where he figures as co-composer. His approach to music via polymetric, minimalist structures are at least in part due to his life as a mathematician. Still, no composition will survive without an emotional content. This is provided via the energetic, ritualistic, and pointillist way the musicians present the music on stage. Stephan Thelen has played among others with Irène Schweizer and Henry Kaiser.

Bernhard Wagner
Guitar
Guitarist Bernhard Wagner has been supporting act for Nik Bärtsch‘s Ronin for many years. His musical zest, the crystal clear guitar sounds and his unique approach to odd rhythms leave a special mark on the music. He not only manages to inspire as a guitarist but also as instructor of workshops that he teaches, involving various percussion instruments. He is an active member of the international live looping scene, for which he has organised festivals lasting several days.

Christian Kuntner
Bass
Bassist Christian Kuntner has been playing since 30 years with Stephan Thelen. Less is more seems to be his motto and he gets rid of all musical ballast in his playing. Deep sounds and grooves maunder on soft paws; his bass work prowls beneath the twittering canopy of harmonics like some pensive big cat on the look out for a bite. Christian Kuntner grew up in the musically rich 80s, has played with countless musicians and can be heard on more than 40 recordings.

Manuel Pasquinelli
Drums
Manuel Pasquinelli is a dynamic drummer who also acts as composer for his own bands. His playing is precise and powerful. His musical approach, thinking beyond his own instrument, characterises his way of playing and lets even the most complex rhythms sound natural and effortless and gives the multi-layered and intricate polyrhythms of Sonar's music an organic quality.

CONCERT REVIEWS

Sonar at Freiburger E-Werk

"A sound that evokes archaic and ritual worlds while using and celebrating the complex sound languages of today. That unites trance-inducing, meditative experience spaces and clear compositional techniques. Sonar from Switzerland enable this. The internationally highly praised quartet played an extraordinary concert at the Freiburger E-Werk. The four musicians braid a minimal rock that, even if influenced by Steve Reich, Glenn Branca or King Krimson with Adrian Belew, has its very own personal style. Without rushing, the two guitarists lay glistening riffs and fragile melodic sequences on top of another with their particularly tuned instruments (in tritones). Wide arcs of suspense and polymetric landscapes are the key features of this highly structured music. Within this the play of the rhythm section is embedded: The bassist indulges in gnarly, voluminous notes and stimulating ostinati, while the drummer consistently captivates with odd meters, sophisticated rock patterns, a refined reduction, and the precision of a clockwork. Remarkable, how this formation repeatedly creates dramatic tensions with their dynamics within floating soundscapes. Sonar enable the physical kick as well as the lucid, attentive listening. Utter Joy."
(Udo Andris - Badischen Zeitung, 29. Feb 2016)

SONAR at Club Orange, Ulm

"The Swiss quartet "Sonar" delivers powerful music without claptrap at the Club Orange - and is rewarded. This is probably how the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem would have imagined the music to his Science-Fiction-Novel "Solaris", put to film by Holliwood: The music that Sonar presented in the Club Orange Ulm from their new album "Black Light". Sounds as precise as a clockwork, extraterrestrial, foreign yet close and perfectionist, as if the instruments were operated by robots and pull the audience into a maelstrom from which there's no escape till the end of the concert. This extraordinary Swiss Band had to be lured for a long time by the organiser of the Kunstwerk e.V. Klaus Köhler, in order to appear at Ulm on their European tour, knowing that the audience for experimental music is rather limited. [...] They delivered a highly concentrated concert that will be remembered for a long time. The concept of the Swiss Jazz musicians is simple, but very hard to realise: To compose pieces that are not based on melodies, but on numbers, structures and symmetries. Can such a kind of music groove? Most certainly. That's what the guitarists Stephan Thelen Bernhard Wagner, Christian Kuntner on bass, and drummer Manuel Pasquinelli demonstrated in a two hour postminimal sound ritual, that also incorporated elements of Jazz and Progressive Rock. Already the musical entry with "Enneagram" chiseled its way into the brains of the audiences minds. The thundering deep bass by Christian Kuntner reminded of the legendary Bassist Dan Berglund of the late Esbjörn Svensson, who managed to elicit psychedelic sounds from his instrument. This powerful and precise music convinced without grandstanding and virtuoso fuss - the Swiss musicians just let their instruments speak and had much to say (to stick to the metaphor). The audience acknowledged with plenty of applause.... The quartet did their name "Sonar" great honour. Since a sonar is used to locate of objects in space (and under water) via sound pulses. And truly full of sound impulses and free of droning it was, this entry concert for the half year program 2016 by Kunsterk e.V. Ulm "
Michael Peter Bluhm - Augsburger Allgemeinen, 29. Feb 2016

"So yeah, something of the cobra dance, a repeated ritual of exquisite symbiosis... Carefully picked harmonics ping against intricately chorded rhythmic runs, the patterns lively and ginger and fluid and utterly fascinating, especially when built on a throbbing monster bass and a proggy jazzy rock insistence of drum, as on the opening title track but really that alignment just about suits the album entire... That bass, it should be mentioned, is key to this projects innate listenability, ploughing chest-rumbling furrows underneath each track and supplying the primal grounding that allows the rest of the structure to take whatever flight it must."

"Beautifully disturbed clockwork...While there's the echoey cymbals and space between guitars, the bass is huge and warm, contrasting with the cold, and this coupled with the effortless polyrhythms draws the listener in... For a music that could be very cerebral, it has a warmth that communicates. You have to experience it live for the full effect, with volume - to hear a beat combo unlike any other. Imagine Glenn Branca's guitar orchestra through the wrong end of a telescope."

PRESSKIT SONAR sonar_home

BIOGRAFIES

CONCERT REVIEWS

IMAGES