Listen: Christopher Tignor - "I, Autocorrelations"

Photo by Ebru Yidiz

With his previous album Along a Vanishing Plane, violinist/software engineer Christopher Tignor essentially took years and years of refined techniques of electronically developed composition and chucked it all out. That might seem a bit dramatic but the result, an album played and recorded live with absolutely no samples, loops, or click tracks grounded Tignor's composition in an unmistakable human element. The heightened risk of imperfection somehow crystallized his technique and emblazened the actual heart of his emotions and led to an impressive array of extended techniques aided by Tignor's engineering capabilities.

A Light Below, the follow up to Tignor's Along a Vanishing Plane, explores the newfound freedom in Tignor's organic rooted compositional framework. "I, Autocorrelations", the first single from the upcoming record is an explosion of sound - a truly mindboggling rush of multitudinous layers that bely the fact that they're all being delivered by a solitary man. On "I, Autocorrelations", Tignor is firmly at a stylistic peak - shifting effortlessly through repetitive bowed phrases and pizzicato all at a positively dazzling pace all the while providing enough space for the various phrases to sing and resonant firmly with the listener. Tignor weaves an effortless tapestry, of dynamic shifts in tone and blend of textures between his own playing and subtle touches added by his software.

"I, Autocorrelations" feels like a continuation of Along a Vanishing Plane but trades the langorous yearning for a more spirited presentation of the liturgical melodies without shedding any of their emotional grounding. It's a sort of musical world building that's properly thrilling, subtler than reoccuring figures or leitmotifs but no doubt rooted in the same sense of elevated storytelling. It's enough to make me properly excited for the rest of A Light Below even if Tignor's proven time and time again to supersede the most wildest of expectations.

Christopher Tignor's forthcoming album A Light Below is out October 11th on Western Vinyl. You can pre-order the album now.