UN-BOW

2020

Un-bow is a futuristic solo album exploring new modes of behaviour and interaction between bow, strings, body, and code, through Knurl, a hybrid (acoustic/electric), solar-powered, 16 stringed cello designed so that one can reprogram its sound on the fly. In the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, I was incredibly grateful to be able to release it through Kickstarter. Meeting and even exceeding its initial fundraising goals, the project could be fully realized, with new collaborations that became possible through this robust support.

This is, of course, an unconventional album. Like the instrument itself, the work is hybrid, functioning both as a sonic production and a kind of narrative game. Each track of the album is complemented by a flash fiction piece or prose poem by American writer Tim Horvath. Listeners are invited to read alongside the music, and to consider which musical track might "correspond" with each narrative. By "correspond," we mean to call attention to the postcards that they resemble, or to any messages, trans-Atlantic, crossing oceans of time or mere rooms. These pieces were composed and written not in isolation but through a dynamic back-and-forth, and the pieces themselves might be thought of as attempted antidotes or salves to isolation, not just within the current pandemic conditions, but in peering forward at the still-inchoate world to come. There are no exact correspondences, no "right answers," though in the end maybe the hope that the listener/reader feels slightly less alone.