Brooklyn-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Ashley Paul has announced the release of a new album entitled Line The Clouds. It will be released on LP and digital formats on March 18th through REL Records, a label run by frequent collaborator Eli Keszler. It’s described in the text accompanying its release as "a hyper-intuitive record, where off-kilter instrumentation meets beautifully crafted melodies to convey the very essence of ‘musicality’… [it] contains 44.18 minutes of sonic paradoxes and dichotomies."
In advance of its release, you can listen to album opener ‘Soak The Ocean’ below, which finds her voice picking out quiet harmonies above plucked strings and rattling percussion. Despite its spaciousness and comparative calm, there’s a rawness and intensity to the way the track unfolds, thanks to a background filled with shrieking metal and industrial thrum. There’s a similar tension running throughout the record, which moves from recognisable song-based forms to disorienting experiments in drone, spatial trickery and psychoacoustics.
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Paul already has an extensive discography and musical history, both solo and in collaboration with other artists. Using saxophone, clarinet, voice, bowed percussion and more, she’s recorded a series of records for REL, and was a contributing player on Keszler’s excellent Catching Net 2CD which was released last year via PAN. She also plays alongside Keszler in duo Aster, regularly collaborates with Geoff Mullen (among others) and plays with multi-instrumentalist (and former John Zorn collabortor) Anthony Coleman in duo and also as a member of his Damaged Quartet. For more information on Paul, click here to visit her website.
