"Sixteen Snares" from the album "Twenty-Two Strings" by Ex-Easter Island Head, released by Low Point records: lowpoint.bandcamp.com/album/twenty-two-strings
Video by Jack Whiteley
www.jackwhiteley.tv/
Following on from the critically acclaimed Mallet Guitars trilogy (2010-13) and Large Electric Ensemble (2014) and honed across high profile live appearances including the Stewart Lee curated ATP, Liverpool Psych Fest and the Edinburgh Fringe, Twenty-Two Strings is the latest album from UK-based experimental trio Ex-Easter Island Head.
Utilising horizontally-laid electric guitars and bass, the group continue to develop their own distinctive musical language, eschewing digital processing and effects for a vocabulary of mechanical preparations and extended techniques, creating a sound drawing on minimalism, gamelan and process music.
Their most complex and focused release yet, "Twenty-Two Strings" finds the group refining their overtone-rich string explorations around a skeleton of tuned bells and drums, bringing a new propulsive momentum to the group’s goal of “an ever changing surface over an unmoving centre”.
Across these seven pieces, Ex-Easter Island Head push the boundaries of their intentionally restrained set-up, balancing austere physicality with luminescent abstraction to create a bold summation of the group's work to date.