If you needed any more proof that we are living in a post-genre world, one where artists aren’t just hopping genres and dancing deftly between sonic demarcations but ignoring such boundaries, tribal allegiances, rules and regulations altogether, then “Or Will You” is surely it.
This may be the lead single from the duo’s debut album, Voltage, but this decade-long friendship between six-string electric cellist Wytold and multi-instrumentalist Jerry Tolk has taken them all over the musical, and actual, map. You feel a sense of inevitability that they would eventually make an album under their own names and forge a musical path of their own.
As an introduction to their artfully experimental sonic world, “Or Will You” is a perfect way to lay out their sonic stall. Swathes of cello swoop and swoon around skittering beats and depth-charge bass lines; the neo-classical world merges with more avant-garde soundscapes; the analog world is subsumed by cutting-edge digital deftness, and the whole thing is beyond beguiling.
So far beyond that, I would say that it is the sound of sonic worlds colliding, new regions of the musical map being defined, new genres… not that we are interested in anything as passé and pedestrian as genres… being formed, new sonic paths being beaten, a rare liminal space or slim section of the musical Venn Diagram where spikey electronica and adventurous classical, shimmering strings and riffing guitars, brooding bass and orchestral anthemics are all found spurring each other on to new creative heights.
It isn’t often that you find yourself at the birth of a new form, but this is where we find ourselves. How cool is that?
The answer…very!
