Mutatio by QONIAK

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First a furious hard-hitting beat, metronomic and obstinate, biting and dislocating. Then one hell of a funky-technoide riff sets in, played on a Vintage Moog. Having burnt some rubber, QONIAK can now let rip. And for Vincent Membrez (synth) and Lionel Friedli (drums), “letting rip” means acting like slightly nutty Siamese scientists in a secret lab, randomly turning knobs on a Pro-One 80’s keyboard to see what happens; taking contemporary jazz and cutting it to pieces with a techno-indus blade, math rock scalpel, overlapping tempos and rhythmical breaks gleaned from Meshuggah. With one foot in Area 51, the other in the underground passageways of Stranger Things, “we experiment flat out”, proclaim QONIAK! And desire does the rest.

As if thrown onto Saturn without assistance, QONIAK recorded 8 tracks live at Artefax Studios. David Odlum was in charge of mixing. The coordinates: 37°14′06″N, 115°48′40″W. Watch out, the air is unstable! To venture here is to dive into a video game from the 80s full of aliens, that could have been designed by the brothers Duffer and Carpenter. To stay is to feel your cells vibrate, sparkle, short-circuit and dissolve into a quantic experience.

QONIAK (Lionel Friedli, drums - Vincent Membrez, synths) was formed at the turn of the century. The two swiss musicians take advantage of their acute musical complicity to express all their sonic phantasmagorias. The outcome is a kind of contemporary bestiary of beats, patterns and furious free improvised music.