What can really surprise you these days as far as modern music is concerned?
Very little actually, no matter how good it turns out to be. Usually, even if it is something that can be labelled as experimental, you’re hoping to get at least a modicum of individuality, along with all the elements that might have been used before and have a ring of the known.
Of course, it is hard to expect something like Captain Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’ to suddenly drop out of the sky, but at least, if the main elements are known, is it possible to have them reshuffled and rearranged in some manner that is off a beaten path.
Maybe that is exactly what we’re getting from Calgary artist/producer Tawni Bias and his latest album ‘SEL Fellow.’
When ‘Admonition’ starts the album, you realize that something is completely wrong. On exactly the right way.
Some wavering electronics and modified vocals with shifting rhythmic patterns, anywhere on the edge of trip-hop, but certainly on a path of its own.
And this shifting off patterns that range from all-vocal ‘Cardamom’ to some left-field electronic arrangements of ‘Gossamer’ make this music simply stick into your memory. With ease.
Tawni himself says that his music was being “made in layers that stick with consistent energy that builds throughout. Orchestrated layers that leave you with something new and poignant for each returning listen. In the long process these tracks were created in I found healing—and I hope others will too.”
Tawni Bias nails it with both his music and the description of it. And yes, it is its unexpected elements that actually do make it healing.
