Barchan – Soliton CD

BARCHAN creates a thick tapestry of sound that moves like no other; organic and chaotic drums work together with an ambient landscape of noisy bass-drones, spiraling between searing intensity and delirious waves of calm.

This is percussion-driven industrial drone music that is generated entirely in live performance. The instrumental line up creates a further level of abstraction, detaching the listener from reality through a sound that is modern whilst human.

Shards of electric bass noise abstracted and stretched through real time software processing provides an electronic element that still feels connected to intense guitar music. The drones appear and disappear, with echoes of industrial, doom, dissonant post punk, and dark brooding ambient layers swimming around the hypnotic free drumming.

Even in these early stages BARCHAN possesses their own distinctive sonic signature. Early gigs have seen audiences taken off guard by the combination of familiarity and BARCHAN’s mysterious, engulfing sound.

BARCHAN is James Welburn on Drones and Tomas Järmyr on Drums, both musicians share a fascination with exploring their limits.

James Welburn has been playing bass guitar in avant garde rock bands in London since the early 90’s, and later worked in the film sound design industry. This was followed by 10 years submerged in the latest software developments in Berlin whilst escaping into the cities rich experimental improv scene at night . Always possessing a desire to explore the mystery contained within rich sonic details, he finally united these aspects into a live soundscape; an amalgamation of raw searing electric bass and the latest software processing, resulting in a generative combination that fuses his past with his present.

Tomas Järmyr was already sitting behind the drums as a small child. Today his uninhibited playing reflects a non-stop level of invention. (Textura) Force, finesse, intensity and a sheer endless control over textures. Heart, skill, technical ability and an ear for the dynamics and air within the music all combined at the highest level. Tomas easily switches between driving free jazz bands to gently backing up song smiths, from forging vast experimental soundscapes to all out bulldozing with rock bands. (Serenity Custom Drums)

The duo play primarily improvised music, and recently produced – Soliton – a 57 minute track drawn from two days of recording in May 2014.

The record captures well the special chemistry and subversive sound of the band. Both musicians individual styles contrasting to combine into a bigger picture.

Recorded and mixed in the main studio of the Norwegian University of Technology by Amund Ulvestad in Trondheim, it included using many vintage microphones that brought out both the depth and range and many nuances within the live soundscape the duo conjure up.

All of this has been harnessed brilliantly by Daniel Lidén’s mastering work in Stockholm, Sweden.

The name Barchan comes from crescent shaped migratory sand dunes in the desert, some of which are known to generate low frequency drones.