You Today LP

Martial Canterel

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Sequence Press is proud to distribute a Wierd Records release, the new album by Martial Canterel entitled You Today. Since his first live performances in 2002, Sean McBride, aka Martial Canterel (who also performs as half of the duo Xeno & Oaklander), has produced a rich catalog of self-released and limited edition LPs, cassettes, and compilation tracks. The carefully crafted, private, raw, and often feverishly aggressive 'minimal synth' sound he has pioneered has been a pillar influence for the Brooklyn minimal electronics scene and and beyond. Merging the influences of the first wave of relatively unknown minimal electronic bands in northern Europe, and seminal industrial noise bands such as Throbbing Gristle and SPK, with the smoothly stylish songcraft of early British New Wave, Martial Canterel records and performs using analogue synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines exclusively. Thoughtful yet distinctly danceable and infectious, this record is the apex of McBride's icily idiosyncratic sound.

You Today incorporates bright, urgent melodies that snake and and swagger between major and minor keys. The songs emanate a subtle melancholic darkness and a rhythmic, militant propulsion keeping things moving against all odds. Lyrically, the album continues McBride's exploration of the increasing difficulty in trying to connect with real people and real things as technology renders the material substance of bodies and objects ever more abstract and distant. This yearning for unmediated human contact with the world is appropriately echoed throughout the album by the hands-on, entirely live approach to recording and performance ("the molding of electricity" as he has referred to his compositional technique.) "Market" and "Sidestreets" each delve into the disconcerting atmospheres of crowds, buildings, objects and intimates; the city with its boulevards, by-ways, and dead ends complicating the meeting of two lost and wandering figures (perhaps lovers?) The restrained, sensual haze of "The Empty Sand" conjures oceanic imagery while the title track is a lament to love lost, ambiguously addressing the listener as a memory image of potential connection and attraction.

The solitary listener can certainly enjoy the music of Martial Canterel, but its visceral intensity also translates directly to the dancefloor. Amidst a flurry of flesh in motion, in a blissful atmosphere of material connection with others, the concepts that permeate the music and its creation become a reality.

Tracklisting:
1. Occupy These Terms
2. Market
3. Sidestreets
4. The Empty Sand
5. Still a Part
6. Some Days
7. You Today
8. Secret Stores
9. Don't Let Me Go