Coming May 6, 2022: TONED (S/T) is the fourth full-length studio album from the electroacoustic trio TONED. Composed and recorded in Oakland, Tampa, and Philadelphia during a series of cloistered retreats, and meticulously crafted in monastic isolation for nearly two years, TONED is the band’s most ambitious statement to date. TONED pits the fiercely analog, animalistic saxophone of Tom Weeks against the crushing digital precision of Nathan Corder’s eminently mutable networks, alongside the poly directional structures of Leo Suarez’s approach to percussion, all while maintaining a driving, rock-hard musical synthesis – following in the tradition of Roscoe Mitchell’s encounters with George Lewis’ Voyager, Bay Area legends The Hub and Possessed, and the brutally technical compositions of Disgorge. The trio’s decentralized locale, between Oakland and Philadelphia, is reflected in the nonlinear and non-hierarchical processes that construct the band’s self-titled release.
Featuring guest performances by Sulynn Hago (Propaghandi), David Vassalotti (Merchandise), and the psychosexual existentialism of poet Michael Bahr, TONED continues the band’s developments in the esoteric realms of contemporary composition, xenochronic formalization, and sonic descriptor analysis – a method born from utopic visions of a unified taxonomy of “sound-space”, but which now fuels the dystopian engines of techno-hellscapes like Spotify and Pandora – the Bicoastal trio offers TONED as a fractal chimera, generated by multiple layers of compositional feedback loops. Through this album, the trio works towards a completely restructured, and highly personalized sonic destination, born from a collective distrust in the canons of present- day art forms and commonly ingested sound principles.
Beautifully mastered by Alex Colombo (Diamond Soul), TONED has also collaborated with Berlin-based video artist Kenji Jones to produce the album artwork and the video for the first single ‘New Regimes.’ TONED will be available through select retailers worldwide, and can be purchased in physical and digital editions directly from the band.
Pre-order available now at: https://toned.bandcamp.com/
Carlos Cotallo Solares is a Spanish composer and improviser currently living in Philadelphia. His work deals with subjects like quotation, meter and tempo polyphony, improvisation, and the relationship between music and language. His pieces often focus on a single concept or technique that is interpreted in multiple ways. He is a member of the free improvisation trio Wombat and creates audiovisual works with the video artist Timothy David Orme. He also performs as a solo improviser and makes experimental rock music under the name Black Stork. Carlos finished a PhD in composition at the University of Iowa, completing previously a Master’s degree at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and a Bachelor’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.
