new album announcement: "Whatever is profound loves masks"

preview of album artwork for "...Masks"

Early next year will see some significant changes in my compositional approach. To date, the audio material I’ve been most regularly associated with is in a kind of cut-up / hardcore acousmatic style in which tone color is the paramount musical value. But after quite a bit of rehearsing, and a heap of discarded drafts, I now have a couple albums’ worth of material that wed this “classic” TBWB style to something much more composed, streamlined, and (maybe…) accessible.

The first flowerings of this were on my “Liminalia” album, and since then I’ve become much more ambitious in terms of allowing other sounds to feature besides the usual entangling web of electronics. “Whatever is Profound Loves Masks,” my forthcoming (early 2026) album on Taras Opanasiuk’s excellent Sublime Retreat label will be loaded with sonic seasonings: treated piano, ensemble strings, hammer dulcimer, bowed guitar and more. The final product will be one of the most unashamedly musical / tonal things I’ve done. Oh and no generative A.I. will be utilized, period.

The paradoxical title, cribbed from Nietzsche, is also a good clue as to the proceedings, and to my overall campaign to resolve the superficial with the profound. The pieces on this new album are musical “masks” I put on in an attempt to see how much of a distinct organism I can remain while performing obvious acts of mimesis - something I consider to be one of the fundamental creative acts. In this suite of songs, there are definite nods to the methods of Can or Faust, and even a sort of homage to the pairing of lacerating synth and solemn piano as featured on Nico’s incomparable “You Forgot To Answer.”

Percussion of various types is also used in new compositions as “intensity builder” or punctuation, rather than as a ‘dance’ enabler.

Note that, as my final bow of 2025, I’ll also be releasing a sort of (digital only) companion piece or “dress rehearsal” for “…Masks,” entitled “Like Some Heliotropic Plague.” If “…Masks” brings to mind any or all of the Germanic cultural heavyweights noted above, then this may be more “country western” in orientation. You’ll just have to hear it to understand what is meant by that ;-)

Thanks again everyone for your support!,

Thomas