On “Cells”, the son of the late flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler pushes his instrument of choice toward uncharted territories with shifting soundscapes.
Five years ago, Gaspar Claus, a musician with a thousand projects and collaborations as classical as they are iconoclastic, a cello prodigy who guides it into unsuspected territories—from jazz to flamenco via electronic—released his first solo album. A light and dreamy Tancade, like a summer breeze, released on InFiné, a label always on the lookout when it comes to documenting the symbioses between classical and electronic music.
With Cells, successor divided into independent vignettes that interact in symbiosis, the son of the late flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler extends the adventure: seizing a instrument whose reputation is corseted and subjecting it to the possibilities of machines, weaving a fascinating blend of experimental and pop, real and virtual, digital and numeric.
Between bucolic ambient and fluffy field recording
Aided in production by Basile3, Cells is the fruit of a year and a half of meticulous work, where every detail seems weighed and measured, as if to better maintain this precarious balance that makes all the magic of Clausian alchemy. “Most of these sounds have been processed, run through machines, transformed into more synthetic or electric sounds, sometimes more percussive,” explains Gaspar Claus.
“I feel a fertile struggle between the instrument and its digitalization. The electronics remains organic because its raw material always derives from the cello.” This second album thus extends the moving soundscapes and shifting atmospheres initiated by its predecessor, between bucolic ambient, fluffy field recording and thwarted experiments, drawing a kind of sonic mirage, inviting as much to contemplation as to introspection.
Cells (InFiné/Bigwax). Release on September 25.
