Spanish Prayers signees The Furniture (Michael Kuhl and Matthew Pierce) have shared the video for their latest single “Kontrail.” The track is the second single taken from their forthcoming self-titled debut album, out January 28.
Watch the video for “Kontrail” below:
Improvisation isn’t all about the moment itself. For Michael Kuhl and Matthew Pierce, their new project The Furniture celebrates free form spontaneity, yet arrives from a deep-rooted understanding of one another. The Furniture is the pair’s debut album, being released through Cigarettes After Sex’s refreshed label Spanish Prayers and is a meditative trip through amorphous drones, rolling drums and haunting atmospheres. Although it came together in just one two-hour session together, the genesis has a greater history, having played together in various touring bands both in Baltimore and abroad.
The Furniture is their first album as a duo and the chance for them to distil their respective playing styles away from their other projects. The record has been taken entirely from a single live performance recorded in the Reverb club in Baltimore. Frequent collaborator producer Steve Wright brought a mobile studio and some mics down to the small live room and its even smaller stage. From there he let the pair subconsciously weave years of mutual understanding into the free form eight tracks that make up the album.
“Making a record free form can be a little risky. It’s not guaranteed that the creative forces that are summoned will show up,” say the duo. “But when they do, it can be one of the most fulfilling aspects of recording, in the way that each time you go back and listen, it can take you to a place or an emotion yet to be discovered.”
The result is an exploration of gradually shape-shifting constructions. The pair point to 1970’s German experimental music such as Cluster, and the pioneering minimalist composer Moondog as touchstones; those kosmiche influences do show themselves on The Furniture—be it during the synthesized ebb and flow on “Kontrail” or the shuffling drums that gradually bring themselves to the forefront “Set to Quiver,” amidst a myriad of other percussive shakers and flutters.
That these compositions manage to hold such a strong overall identity while traversing so much sonic ground is testament to the pair’s combined sense of creative adventure and trust in one another.
On the track’s release, the duo state:
“As so often is the case with this band, we’ve left certain aspects to chance which is the case with the opening thread that runs throughout the piece. We’ve both interpreted and reacted to it in our own way, as you might an inconspicuous or veiled figure, ultimately taking the song somewhere unexpected.”
Stream The Furniture here.
Follow The Furniture on Bandcamp.
