Krononaut - Krononaut (2020) [Official Digital Download]

Coming out of the fertile London jazz and experimental scenes, Krononaut is a richly textured new ensemble helmed by guitarist /producer Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Imogen Heap, Jon Hopkins) and drummer Martin France (Nils Petter Molvær, Evan Parker). The album features an esteemed group of collaborators and a sonic footprint that channels spectral ambiance, ‘fourth world’ expansions and a gorgeous slow-boiling pointillism.

‘No one’s dictating where it is going. We are treating it incredibly carefully. That sort of music, it’s delicate. You’ve got to know what you’re doing, but at the same time not do it’ (Martin France, Krononaut)

Krononaut are a posse of time-expanding shapeshifters who, in the space of two sessions recorded early last year in London, have managed to produce ten cuts of arresting, deeply immersive instrumental music. Tak:til, Glitterbeat’s experimental arm, now fifteen releases strong in a little over three years, has again found a record that echoes many key aspects of its emerging soundworld.

The core of the album is provided by Leo Abrahams, whose startling guitar lit up Small Craft On A Milk Sea, some of Brian Eno’s best work of the last couple of decades, and who plays and produces here, and Martin France, the extraordinary drummer whose wide list of achievements and collaborators includes Evan Parker, Nils Petter Molvær and, more tangentially, Elvis Costello. Experimental music contains multitudes, so it’s perhaps no surprise that the two men came at it from, if not opposing sides, then from two radically different backgrounds: Leo, who started off studying classic composition and who, in his own words, ‘can’t play jazz’, and Martin, whose playing rests precisely on what he refers to a ‘jazz sensibility’, on everything about interacting within and shaping the music implied by that term.

So those are the terms of reference right there―freedom and a room for creativity that Martin says is rare and in which he, in particular, delights in. ‘I have never encountered anybody who has quite the approach [Leo] has. He keeps it open to whichever way it might want to go.’ Leo returns the compliment: ‘I had never played with a drummer like Martin before. It felt really exciting.’

TRACKLIST

1. Krononaut - Jena
2. Krononaut - Mob Kindu
3. Krononaut - Leaving Alhambra
4. Krononaut - Location 14
5. Krononaut - Power Law
6. Krononaut - Cold Blood
7. Krononaut - Vision of the Cross
8. Krononaut - Wealth of Nations
9. Krononaut - Examen
10. Krononaut - Convocation



Thanks to the Original customer.