In tour per presentare il nuovo lavoro su Constellation, "Guitar & Voice", perfetto compendio del songwriting con improvvisazione di cui Eric è maestro. Per fans di Wyatt, Tim Buckley e Richard Youngs...

Eric Chenaux arriva dal Canada ed unisce l'approccio alla strumentazione classica con una vena da sperimentatore, proponendosi come eccezionale manipolatore di chitarre ed elementi elettronici. Dopo aver suonato e cantato negli anni 80 e 90 nella band post-punk dei Phleg Camp e nel duo Lifelikeweeds, nel 2001 fonda l'etichetta Rat-drifting con la quale pubblica musica di amici e collaboratori, dedicandosi alla scoperta di realtà sonore inedite e difformi..
L'originalità  della tecnica chitarristica e scritturale di Chenaux, del tutto difformi e molto avanzate rispetto alla consuetudine folkie, fa sì che l'insieme risulti veramente peculiare ed eccentrico, una via di mezzo tra avant rock, out folk e musica di ricerca... come se uno dei vecchi maestri (Bull, Fahey) avesse deciso di misurarsi sul formato della canzone.

"Era molta la curiosità per il nuovo album di Eric Chenaux... Ci sono tante cose diverse, tanti profumi sparsi in queste tracce... Quello jazzy di Amazing Backgrounds e Dull Lights, quello di gighe irlandesi di Simple/Frontal, quello hendrixiano della litania psichedelica Sliabh Aughty, quell gospel dell'accorata meraviglia di dissonanze e tremori Put in Music. La voce fragile e malinconica di Eric manda a memoria Wyatt e Billie Holiday (ma anche il Tim Buckley di Blue Melody in However Wildly We Dream) e firma i momenti migliori... Sentirla riconcilia col mondo..." Stefano Isidoro Bianchi, Blow Up, marzo 2012

"PIU’ DI UN SENTORE DI JEFF BUCKLEY INVECE NELLA VOCE DI ERIC CHENAUX, CANADESE DI ESTRAZIONE HARDCORE/PUNK, I CUI ORIZZONTI SI SONO VIA VIA ALLARGATI VERSO UNA MUSICA PIU’ SPERIMENTALE. CON GUITAR & VOICE REGALA UN NOTEVOLE ESEMPIO DELLE SUE CAPACITA’. CHITARRA DALLE MOVENZE JAZZY E VOCE CALDA PER UN DISCO MELANCONICO, ADDIRITTURA STRUGGENTE, CON PUNTE DI PURA ARTE" (RECENSIONE BOXATA SU ALIAS/IL MANIFESTO SABATO 25 FEBBRAIO)

"SE GLI STRUMENTALI IN CUI LA SEI CORDE VIENE TRATTATA E PROCESSATA FINO AD OTTENERE UNA SORTA DI FLUSSO DI COSCIENZA ALIENO – COME NELL’HENDRIXIANA SLIABH AUGHTY – SONO INTRIGANTI MA PURE UN FILO IMPEGNATIVI, LE CANZONI SFIORANO IL SUBLIME. SU TUTTE L’INZIALE AMAZING BACKGROUNDS, MAGICA SINTESI TRA TIM BUCKLEY E SAM COOKE" (MUCCHIO MARZO, 3 STELLE)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH8qnCM-L_Y&feature=endscreen&NR=1
http://www.ondarock.it/recensioni/2006_chenaux.htm

*Eric Chenaux* is one of Toronto's most prolific and respected musical iconoclasts, an experimental guitar virtuoso with over two decades of dedicated and diverse service to an artistic community that encompasses postpunk, lo-fi, folk, multi-media composition and performance (chiefly in collaboration with modern dance) and free and improvised music. *Warm Weather With Ryan Driver is Eric's third album for* *Constellation*, which has been the conduit for his primary song-oriented solo work since 2006. Building on his fruitful collaboration with piano/synth/melodica player Ryan Driver – whose key role on the new album is signaled by his inclusion in its very title - the new record is without doubt Chenaux's most accomplished and focused work of forward-looking, contemporary balladry.
*Chenaux's previous album Sloppy Ground* was a masterful exploration of fried folkways wedded to improvisational/avant strategies – it *was named one of the 50 avant-rock albums of the year by The Wire magazine*. Buzzing, winding melodic lines derived from Scottish folk tropes paced many of the songs, interspersed with expansive, atmospheric lullabyes that were noted by NPR's All Songs Considered as "drop-dead gorgeous...earnest and heartfelt". We certainly feel these words thoroughly apply to the new album as well.
*Warm Weather With Ryan Driver envelops the twin tendencies of Sloppy Ground – ornate experimentation with extended melodic structures and cradling lullabye/love song ambience – in a newfound coherence and temperance*. Chenaux's use of nylon string guitar as the spine for almost every track (expertly captured by sound engineer Radwan Moumneh) is the most notable shift in instrumentation from its predecessor, establishing a slightly different but timbrally profound anchor for the new tunes. As the album title suggests, the record is unified by a kind of humid, languorous glue, the sort of atmosphere that Chenaux compares to "that weather where the skin and air see no difference in each other". This sort of climatic metaphor was a touchstone for Chenaux's approach to the arranging and recording, ably supported by Driver's use of droning organs and synths and his delicately paced, gently jazz-inflected piano. *The overall effect is often akin to an interstice of Talk Talk, John Martyn and Robert Wyatt. Chenaux produces some of the most mature, subtly sophisticated and satisfying avant-folk music we know*.
The new full-length has already been foreshadowed by the Warm Weather 7" (on the Eat, Sleep, Repeat imprint) which has been called "gemlike...with a beguiled introspective glow" (Losing Today), "wistful and subtly romantic...truly lovely" (Textura) and "impressive nylon-string balladry enmeshing Chenaux's half-whispered musings within a snare of tenderly-woven melancholy" (Record Collector).


*STATEMENT*

Jean Chenaux lived just outside San Juan on the tropical island of Puerto Rico.
That is where I knew her.
Still.
She rarely if ever listened to music and I spent most of my time there underwater.
And in that weather, where the skin and the air see no difference in each other,
I lived with ghosts. San Juan ghosts, Spanish ghosts, orchid ghosts, bird ghosts…
They have reappeared, not those ghosts in particular. But ghosts.
I can’t really talk about these ones.
Not now. I don’t want to turn their hauntings into images. Into theater (the fear of death).
They are not in the music anyways, but haunting the space between me and the music.
Another way of saying that the music isn’t mine anyways, that our feelings don’t matter,
and that’s our only hope.
I am calling this record Warm Weather With Ryan Driver.
The last two records had more pithy titles: Sloppy Ground, Dull Lights.
I probably could have continued in this vein and may again.
I decided to think differently this time, so I looked outside.
What other titles am I attracted to?
That led me to the titles that Bruce Nauman chooses for his work.
They are inseparable from it.
I thought of one of my favourties: "End of the World," with Lloyd Maines
Wonderful and idiosyncratically evocative (and strangely hilarious) even if you have
never seen the piece, which I haven’t.
Ryan Driver and I have spent a lot of time outside (playing music and not), mostly in the
summer months. And as I intimated before, my time, my memories, the warm weather of
Puerto Rico were on my mind. So I put these hauntings in the title. Just shoved them in there.

ERIC CHENAUX, TORONTO, 2010