Chants – Poly Pointillism
Astral Plane Recordings
released February 3, 2021
Chants delivers his second album for Astral Plane Recordings in two years. Seven Spheres, released in 2019, marked the culmination of several years of work on dancefloor-intentioned rhythmic forms. Its dense, sound system-specific approach has given way to the improvisational levity of Poly Pointillism, due out on February 5.
Built from a series of daily percussion videos the Madison-based artist worked on over the Summer, Poly Pointillism cues into a controlled emotional vernacular that combines zoned listening as much as flexi-BPM DJ play. Familiar rhythms loop into excess, becoming unfamiliar in the process, while a small set of samples and instruments shift between the comfortable and the alien.
Poly Pointillism was written in short bursts, utilizing a deliberately comfortable set of textures, rhythms and palettes. It is a project that emerged from the specific space and time of mid-Summer pandemic lockdown and builds in a claustrophobia and drive to excess that will be familiar to many. It is also specific to Chants’ arc as a musician, following a series of releases that matched his prowess in percussion with a club functionalism. Within both contexts, Poly Pointillism can be understood as a release; from the limitations of dancefloor rigidity and the austerity of pandemic confinement.