On August 23rd, 2019, Alexander Tucker will release his eighth studio album, Guild of the Asbestos Weaver, following the 2018 album Don't Look Away. Where Don't Look Away marked a more personal closing to a trilogy of releases, Guild of the Asbestos Weaver sculpts minimalist motifs into deep drone constructions, weaving dense layers of maximalist sound to powerful disorienting effect. Through inventive studio manipulation Tucker conjures vivid preternatural landscapes from a synthesis of acoustic instruments and electronic sources.
Alexander Tucker employs music as a mode of psychic transportation. His collaged lyrics spin tales of parallel dimensions: dream-like landscapes near the end of perception, with scenes of cursed high-rises, giant speakers transmitting across the city, and unknown horrors at the bottom of the sea.
Guild of the Asbestos Weaver leans even further into
Alexander Tucker's fascination with science fiction and cosmic horror, bringing it closer into the orbit of his work as a visual artist. The album title, taken from Ray Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451, refers to the underground opposition of the dystopian novel's totalitarian government ideology. Rather than carrying any explicit political message,
Guild of the Asbestos Weaver seeks to simply spark the imagination, envisioning an alternate past and new future as the first step towards realizing them. Tucker cites "Dreamweapon", a term coined by Angus MacLise as a key touchstone; reading it as the idea that dreams and alternate forms of perception can be used as a personal fight against the status quo of society, thought and human order.
Guild of the Asbestos Weaver captures Tucker's boundless vision as a composer. In focusing on the more arcane aspects of his sound, and giving individual ideas and motifs more space to grow and evolve,
Alexander Tucker has made his most immersive and intoxicating music yet.
Alexander Tucker is playing a London show with Ariel Kalma on June 20th at Cafe Oto, and plans to play select dates later this summer throughout the UK and Europe.
Comments
To post a comment, you must
register and
login.
