Solo Andata - In the Lens (2016)

In the Lens, Solo Andata’s fourth full-length album, was born from recordings found in the interstices of decades-old hard drives, lost email threads from disused accounts, and forgotten samples recorded on cassette dictaphones. These fragments were combined and re-worked with newer elements to create an album very much in the spirit of the band’s debut Fyris Swan (Hefty Records, 2006), an album touched by both folk and jazz and swathed in a dusty, narcotic haze.

Solo Andata’s Kane Ikin and Paul Fiocco have always pushed aside the digital studio in favor of a more haphazard and hands-on workshop vibe to their productions. They prefer near-broken acoustic instruments, cheap microphones and, as can be witnessed by their live performances, tend to turn anything they can get their hands on into a beautiful sound-making object.

While there is a raw and guileless nature to the duo’s sound it is precisely this that makes their music so powerful amidst the over-produced cliches of much modern music. The beauty of their work is how simple instruments and objects can be physically manipulated into creating such rich, layered sound. Dark, swaying, almost-looped melodies from piano, woodwinds and horns wrap themselves in smoky obscurity around remnants of percussion and warm beds of noise and the world around us.

In The Lens is very much a late-night record, reflected in the rain-soaked cover imagery, dripping with half-forgotten memories. Jittery yet calming, rhythmic, yet unhurried, it leads you down its dark corridors to a soft resting space. Ikin and Fiocco have created a new story around the chemistry of their creations that were taking place during the early days of their musical explorations.