Inspired by a bird landing on a city windowsill, Air Signs by anthéne looks to the skies for meaning or assurance. We don’t find a feathery, avian energy here. Instead, this is an airborne album of open expanse and surging textures, matching the bird’s natural element. Ephemeral guitar sounds overlap in loops, rising and falling like breath. Diffuse gusts of melody blow past. Bright glimmers of sound give a sense of sunlight and shadow.
Air is immediate evoked on Air Signs. So what about signs? With guitar, pedal, and filter, artist Brad Deschamps weaves signification out of thin air, or transcribes the air’s own signifying. The finished work may be organic and effortless, but the activity of meaning-making is hinted at. Rustles, clicks, pops, and crackling…
Tag Archive: anthéne
Brad Deschamps has released a generous amount of anthéne material on his Toronto-based Polar Seas Recordings imprint, but he’s also found a comfortable second home on Home Normal. This latest collaboration with cellist and fellow sound sculptor Simon McCorry — their fourth, after previous albums on whitelabrecs, Hidden Vibes, and Oscarson — follows on from Deschamps’ anthéne release frailty on HR and is as refined a collection of evocative ambient as one would anticipate from the two.
With “standing silent,” wellspring ushers in on a gentle wave of mellotron-like sonorities the duo build on with painterly washes of undisclosed origin. No instrument details are listed, but chances are McCorry’s cello and Deschamps’…